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While the article points out many worrying trends which are true, I would caution against making far-reaching predictions, especially if they involve drastic, rapid change.

Orwell warned about this sort of thing already: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...


This was a good read. The author makes a valid point that there is no distinction to be made between Communism and Fascism as they both represent Authoritarianism.

Yeah, that attitude is not new.

> "The point is that as soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged. And, as I have pointed out already, the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when ‘our’ side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified – still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function."


It's not. It's the first time I'm seeing it so clearly–and, again, credit where it's due, honestly–on HN.

[flagged]


> you're going to be shocked, SHOCKED, to find out that 28% of Americans now support Hamas

No. The question is "in the Israel-Hamas conflict do you support more Israel or more Hamas?" That's different from supporting Hamas. Even I'd be on the fence about answering "more Hamas" over "more Israel," though I'd mostly be irritated at the false dichotomy and false equivalence the question implies.

(I'd guess 10 to 20% of Americans support Hamas because that's the fraction that support just about anything, from the flat Earth to the genocide of penguins or whatever.)

> that support for Hamas will only grow stronger as the elderly Americans that are still largely against Hamas die off and replaced by younger Americans that support Hamas

Dig deeper into the polls. It's a strong minority in Gen Z and Alpha. It's not commanding. And it reveals itself for what it is when you ask people to name their No. 1 issue.

I respect folks who have turned this into their pet issue. Ultimately, foreign policy isn't going to be front and centre in American politics unless there is a draft. (And most Americans aren't monsters.)


It doesn't matter if it's the #1 issue or not. What matters is the few % of people that cause tight elections to shift. And it was enough to cause Kamala Harris to lose the election. Israel's attack on Gaza was the primary reason Biden 2020 voters chose not to vote for Harris, per scientific polls (YouGov). And that was from 2 years ago. America has only become more pro-Hamas since.

You can defend the existence of the foreign genocidal state all you want but you really have to understand that Israel is cooked. There is no turning back. It's a dead state walking. And the vast majority of their base of support is in the elderly, which will all die off in 20 years.


> Social media platforms aren't free speech platforms either, you're subject to their terms and conditions.

Sure, but this verification rubbish comes from the government.


Exactly.

Here's Orwell speaking on the whole thing:

> "An argument that Socialists ought to be prepared to meet, since it is brought up constantly both by Christian apologists and by neo-pessimists such as James Burnham, is the alleged immutability of ‘human nature’. Socialists are accused—I think without justification—of assuming that Man is perfectible, and it is then pointed out that human history is in fact one long tale of greed, robbery and oppression. Man, it is said, will always try to get the better of his neighbour, he will always hog as much property as possible for himself and his family. Man is of his nature sinful, and cannot be made virtuous by Act of Parliament. Therefore, though economic exploitation can be controlled to some extent, the classless society is for ever impossible.

> "The proper answer, it seems to me, is that this argument belongs to the Stone Age. It presupposes that material goods will always be desperately scarce. The power hunger of human beings does indeed present a serious problem, but there is no reason for thinking that the greed for mere wealth is a permanent human characteristic. We are selfish in economic matters because we all live in terror of poverty. But when a commodity is not scarce, no one tries to grab more than his fair share of it. No one tries to make a corner in air, for instance. The millionaire as well as the beggar is content with just so much air as he can breathe. Or, again, water. In this country we are not troubled by lack of water. If anything we have too much of it, especially on Bank Holidays. As a result water hardly enters into our consciousness. Yet in dried-up countries like North Africa, what jealousies, what hatreds, what appalling crimes the lack of water can cause! So also with any other kind of goods. If they were made plentiful, as they so easily might be, there is no reason to think that the supposed acquisitive instincts of the human being could not be bred out in a couple of generations. And after all, if human nature never changes, why is it that we not only don’t practise cannibalism any longer, but don’t even want to?"


>If they were made plentiful, as they so easily might be, there is no reason to think that the supposed acquisitive instincts of the human being could not be bred out in a couple of generations.

How would this be bred out without artificially controlling reproduction? What is the action here? The idea that individual pressure for resources would trickle down inter-generationally is lamarckian!

Under a regime of UBI and Reproductive "Freedom", the most successful genes will simply be the ones that choose to reproduce the most, because there are no longer any social or resource limitations on reproduction. You get a totally opposite effect, where the reproductively greediest are the most successful at reproduction. It is a tragedy of the commons.


This is misleading though. There is simply no other choice if you want to use mainstream apps. It could be argued (successfully in my view) that any agreement is null and void due to its acceptance under duress.

Users have an inherent legal right to unconditionally access the full advertised functionality of devices they purchase. Any agreement after that is inherently suspect and I wouldn't be surprised to find out it was ruled unconscionable by some court if it came to that.


> This is misleading though.

This isn't misleading in any way. It's unfortunate and we should be pissed about it, but this is exactly the legal arrangement that Google and Apple came up with.

> I wouldn't be surprised to find out it was ruled unconscionable by some court

Last US court battle, Apple told the court it needed the money from the kids casino to keep its profits, and the court just nodded.

Apple had to be held in comptempt of a court order after 4 years and a deluge of evidence, for us to see any significant move.


I agree it's not awesome, or even good. Unfortunately, it's what we've got today. A fact HN seems to dislike.


Sure, but that still leaves the mystery of how qualia is generated in a mechanistic manner.


Yes. Still perplexing to be thrown into the world. How is it that my individual experience is in this body but not another one? Etc


Just wait till you hear Geoffrey Hinton’s “little pink elephants” routine; it will all make sense then (it won’t). The mystery is almost rivaled by that other mystery of why some of us fail to be mystified.


Something the tweet doesn't mention is that the leak may have come from Intel: https://github.com/tongzx/nt5src/blob/daad8a087a4e75422ec96b...


It's DMCA abuse because that process is only legal to use in case of actual copyright infringement, not just any content you might have a moral claim over.

You can see on the email that the "Original work" field is just a link to the BK website.


> It's DMCA abuse because that process is only legal to use in case of actual copyright infringement, not just any content you might have a moral claim over.

I will reply to this comment because it's the easier to address, you're really hitting on the main misconception :D

It is incorrect to think that the DMCA form is only valid for copyright.

You need to contact the other party to start a legal dispute, you can do so by any available communication channels. The website is hidden behind cloudflare which purposefully hides the identity of the author and prevents any contact, except via a DMCA form. Burger King filled the DMCA form to get in touch with the author. It's merely a mean to legally contact the author and start a dispute, in the absence of better options.

It worked, cloudflare forwarded the form to the author (and the author decided to take down the article on their own). I really can't think of any reason why it would not be considered a reasonable and legitimate use of the form. All the better because it's an official legal form.


> The website is hidden behind cloudflare which purposefully hides the identity of the author and prevents any contact, except via a DMCA form

The blog post says that the author contacted Burger King and they had some sort of communication channel available, Burger King just chose not to use it.


It's really really not. Cloudflare has the appropriate method to contact the owner of a domain behind it's anonymization: https://domaincontact.cloudflareregistrar.com/bobdahacker.co...

DMCA is NOT a contact form. Part of the process is an attestation that you are the owner of a copyright and the content is infringing on that copyright, lying on that is perjury (even though I've never seen it enforced, perjury in general is rarely enforced). The convenience of DMCA as a contact and takedown form does not legitimize it's use as one.


Can you cite the law where it says DMCA is supposed to be used as a contact form to get ahold of the author?

Another commenter in the thread shared where the laws says the exact opposite (DMCA is only for copyright violations)?


It's fraud and perjury to file a DMCA claim for any reason other than someone infringed your copyright. A DMCA claim is only valid if you swear on penalty of perjury that the target infringed your copyright. Otherwise it's meaningless.


As an aside, here's a relevant video about the (sometimes not) chaotic nature of double pendulums: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtjb2OhEQcU



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