interesting that the company that has the most viewed ads for 2024[1] ("FORCE VECTOR COMMUNICATIONS") has a total of 3 matches when you search for them[2]
The obscuring seems to be unnecessary these days. I don't know how many people are still fooled by names like "Americans for America" who would actually change their vote after finding out it's just a group of real estate speculators or whatever.
I think it's the other way round. You're a respectable individual, you're buying some low-brow ads - and you don't want a newspaper to publish an expose about you, your employees throwing a hissy-fit, or a neighbor getting upset.
I understand that mentality but it's clearly not how people behave. People who buy into bullshit do so as a core personality behavior. It's like how doomsday cult members double down when the predictions don't come to pass.
I mean https://www.heavensgate.com/ is still around. Being discredited has the opposite effect as the intended. It instead concretizes the delusions. Exposing charlatans seems to only increase the fanaticism of their adherents.
You are thinking of a completely different situation. No one is thinking of some real estate guy who wants the dems or republicans to win as their cult leader when seeing those ads.
At least in the US, political partisanship I think is operationally pretty similar to a cult. It certainly doesn't have to exist like this but right now I think it is which is why I brought up the observation in the first place.
I feel like that's an impression caused by the current political media environment but it's not reality. Voter turnout is less than 50% of voting age population in the US and a significant portion of the voters are independents. Silent majority or whatever.
Maybe it's because there's too much sensationalism and story-telling? People realized you get better ratings through theatrical emotionally charged fictions sitting adjacent to reality and they're cheaper to produce than careful and cautious journalism? That's kind of Juvenal's bread and circuses theory.
Maybe it's a natural consequence of the vast diversity of information channels and online communities so not only do classically oppressed groups have homes but also those committed to hate or messianic cults?
Maybe there's some increased isolationism of industrial society so people end up severing the in person community ties that help to keep them better attached to reality?
Maybe it's all of these?
My observation of the current state is Republicans are pining for a dictator, Democrats are trying to be a 2002 era George W Bush knockoff and most people are thinking "what is up with these lousy options?"
It's the problem you see in almost all organizations: when you focus on the fans, you alienate the base by deluding yourself into imagining a phantom majority a few steps away from loving you but which in reality wants nothing to do with you.
You noticed how you labeled the alternative to your choice as a dictator? I did.
The solution is to remove parties and make people think for themselves. But I do agree focusing on the extremists is counterproductive. That’s why I’m an independent, to forcefully remove bias.
I voted for some third party candidate just like I have every other time.
I do attend Trump events almost weekly however. There's people who want to get rid of elections entirely. This is a strong belief among many of his supporters. They didn't think elections can be trusted - the "wrong" people are voting, the counting is corrupt, etc. They want no voting or only voting by an extremely vetted group that only agree with them.
The few Democrat events I've gone to, their supporters are completely hallucinating reality. I got constantly blindsided by the irrelevant issues they think are front and center.
I spoke with one recently who thinks the personal religious convictions of the candidates will make evangelicals switch their allegiances to the Dems. Mickey mouse is more likely to pop out of a movie screen. Total whackjobs.
Anyways, simply distancing oneself from a party is part of the problem. It requires the cult of the individual as an insitutional necessity.
out of money, final payroll, no alternative but to go into zombie mode, yet for the last few months the co-founder has been working on his next product which will launch in 2025.
maybe everything that could have been tried was tried but this comes off like some of the effort spent working on the next company could have been spent keeping this one alive
They said they will be using the proceeds from that for-profile company to pay for a team member's salary and keep Exercism running as much as they can.
So this next company could be considered to be an effort to keep this old one alive!
It sucks being out of money and then you have to fend off the "why aren't you more dedicated" line of questioning when you had to find an alternative to keep the company alive
Most likely they saw this coming months ahead of time, and needed to figure out how to pay their own rents after actual doomsday and needed to pre-emptively start figuring out what's next.
Founders who don't start with a pre-existing financial cushion have very, very little job security if they underpay themselves and their businesses shut down without an exit. Also, founders tend to be generalists, and most big companies don't need more generalists, so it's not easy to get hired, doubly so if you have wasted a lot of your brain pitching to investors and having coffee chats with clients. The harsh reality is, the more you are forced to chat with investors and customers instead of working heads-down, the more you lose your hard technical abilities that other people would hire you for.
As a founder of a shutting down company, if you want to pay your rent on time, you need to do one of 3 things: (a) pay higher salaries prior to shutdown to give you some time to figure yourself out (controversial), (b) start studying to be a specialist well ahead of shutdown and get on the interview treadmill, (c) start working on your next thing well ahead of shutdown.
If you do none of those things, things can get really dangerous to your personal finances.
for what it's worth, Chomsky is specifically an advocate of Anarcho-Syndicalism:
Anarcho-syndicalism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and thus control influence in broader society.
I disagree. Anarcho-Syndicalism is a type of Anarchism that would be reasonable. There are other types that are also reasonable, and Chomsky is just as much for them.
The specifics of how workers in a capitalist society gain control of the economy, and replace it with democracy, are dependent on the culture, and what is possible.
Anarcho-Syndicalism is the greatest achievement in Anarchism in Spain though, so perhaps it is the most reasonable of the solutions, I'm only indicating Syndicalism is a possible way, amongst possible ways.
without understanding the language, you still understand that it's a book, it has symbols which represent language, and those symbols can be replicated.
we don't understand what consciousness is or how it is achieved, so discussing how to recreate it isn't really a conversation we can have - we can only discuss how to create a simulacrum.
That’s not because it’s some deep philosophical problem, but because people refuse to define what they mean by consciousness.
Do they mean memory? Attention? Awareness? Self awareness? The inner voice? Qualia? All of these can be explained somewhat, but they keep moving the goalpost
> Is there any hard evidence that founders who secure funding earlier are more likely to provide a VC with a successful exit?
There really isn't much hard evidence about any correlative patterns about early stage VCs. Which is why their model is essentially spray and pray. The successful ones (Sequoias, a1z, etc.) are just signaling rods whereby high growth startups gravitate towards well known VCs, which in turns means signaling to M&A markets.
The charitable interpretation, especially for early stage investors, is that your investment will not be the last one necessary to realize a successful outcome.
If a company is having a hard time finding investors now, in the future when it needs more money it may fail for lack of takers, spiking current investments.
Sensible or cognitive bias that is in play regardless if it is sensible? I've seen a little research on jobs that discriminate against people not currently employed, with longer periods of unemployment leading to greater discrimination. I haven't seen anything about if this is actually justified or not.
I've also heard of this in other areas, like with date, but I haven't been able to find any research and the topic borders some controversial areas that research has struggle handling.
My guess is that it does happen as a bias, related to peer pressure and following a crowd, but like with other biases, even if it makes sense in some cases historically it will lead to illogical behavior in our current society.
This is the smart comment. If, as a VC, you know the outliers are hard to find, would you really get distracted by someone being on the market for 1-2 months?
It's not a technical article. It's a lurid media topic* about a suspicious-looking alleged suicide with zero information for a substantive discussion, and tons of fuel for sinister speculation. That's not what HN is supposed to be for. However, we can give this one a pass because the ongoing Boeing saga is of interest and there's clearly a community appetite to discuss this development.
Edit: even though the thread is terrible, which is just what one would expect from a sensational topic with zero information for a substantive discussion.
* Edit 2: I changed the word 'story' to 'topic' because I don't mean to disparage the BBC article itself - anigbrowl's reply is right on that
Flatly untrue. It's a soberly worded recitation of the available facts with multiple caveas; the frenzy of speculation stems from Boeing's increasingly tattered corporate reputation, not the story. This was written to far higher standards than (for example) a story from the Daily Mail or New York Post; I'm astonished that you would characterize this way.
Sorry—I'm tired and expressed that carelessly, and you're quite right. I wasn't talking about the article and am glad that it is as good as you say. In fact I merged the other thread into this one precisely because the BBC article was better.
What I mean is that the story itself, i.e. the significant new information, is a lurid apparent suicide, and there aren't any details about that, other than it happened. Not because the article is bad but because that is the only piece of information available.
The interest in such a story is neither technical nor intellectual and we shouldn't pretend that it is. It's a suspicious death story with sinister overtones. The curiosity here is not primarily intellectual, which means it's not really a good story for HN, but I'm giving it a pass because it is strange enough to be different and there's a community appetite to discuss it. Normally the latter isn't enough to justify a story remaining on HN's front page but there are degrees of community appetite and I recognize this one.
I also think there are 2 different ways of discussing this - one is on mental health (if it's truly a suicide), shadowy agencies, Boeing's failures, and about corporate whistleblowing and its risks in general.
The other discussion is speculation on what this truly is - which is a more political/controversial topic.
There are lots of discussions on the former set of topics which are fairly popular on HN which explains why this thread is popular. I do think such discussions are valuable if there isn't a ton of speculation, which I think this thread is handling decently (although maybe I'm late enough to see all controversial comments already dead).
The required explanation is unnecessarily unreadable, so I explain it again.
As I wrote in my other comment, I meant the article as it relates to technology. My original comment is hidden below so I explain it again here.
The safety of the environment surrounding engineers is a serious concern of engineers. Note that even if it is a suicide, it is still a safety problem of the environment surrounding engineers. Since it is Boeing that pressured him until he committed suicide.
So I wrote "concerning safety culture of engineers". Your interpretation is a complete misunderstanding. At least the points voted on my above comment indicate that your interpretation is not the majority. Hence, thanks to the many supporters, my above comment received many votes and was moved to this thread and this thread was eventually returned to the top page.
We must not remain ignorant or indifferent to unsafe working environments.
Dang, it would be nice of you if you at least addmitted that the front page as opposed to /active is heavily curated and hand-picked by you and other moderators. Anyone who has been on HN long enogh can see this, there is no point in phrasing it otherwise. And I guess people will be ok with this as long you guys are transparent about it.
Please don't copy-paste comments on HN, and especially not as a way of working around moderation.
If a comment is in some state that you think it shouldn't be, you can ask us to change that and we can at least have a conversation about it, but just reposting it is not ok.
I don't know why you start making such belated arguments but the upvotes for that comment indicate that it was much more helpful to the viewer than flagging it to make it unreadable. And it does not avoid any moderation. What moderation was done? Here the flag serves only as censorship. It lacks objectivity and impartiality. Most people can't read what was written, they can only read your argument.
Moderation isn't driven by upvotes; it's there to compensate for the failures of the upvoting system. If HN could operate by upvotes alone, that would be great—it would be so much less work. Unfortunately, it can't.
A lot of the things you're complaining about have been established practice on HN for many years. If you want to learn how HN works, I'd be happy to help with that. But it's time that you stopped posting off-topic complaints and trying to stir up drama about these things. 18 of these comments in one thread is quite enough.
So what is the avoided moderation and the failures of the upvoting system? Your rebuttal has too many irrelevant new arguments.
All I am saying here is that if some statements can't be read, others can't read the argument. An argument where others can't read one side's statements is not an equal argument. You must at least be able to make every comment you have conversed with readable. Otherwise it is just your speech.
I've replaced it with 'media' at the top. When I say something like that, I just mean the big media websites and they way they cover often-sensational stories.
Excuse me? MSM, a common acronym for the widespread and uncontroversial term "mainstream media", is now a "far-right dogwhistle"? I must have missed that memo.
I can only imagine the bubble you must live in if you think that the "far right" are the only people who see reason to distrust mainstream media.
I am a deeply liberal American. MSM is not a far right dog whistle in the US.
Words are indirect references to ideas and don't have any meaning without a receiver. All of these words have to be contextualized based on the speaker and receiver.
The right are known for lying with the truth which makes a good amount of their rhetoric stick.
Washington is a swamp, almost any American will agree no matter which side, that's why the statement is powerful and effective.
The MSM in the US is irresponsible. Again regardless of which side you are on, you generally understand that US Media is owned by billionaires and corporations or at the very least people who don't have your interest at heart and want to manipulate you rather than inform you. It is not a far right dog whistle at all so much as a statement towards the general non-quality and lack of journalistic integrity in American's most prominent media. The left acknowledges the existence of "MSM" and blames them for giving the previous president attention and therefore power. The real difference is what MSM is actually referring to. One side generally means "all cable news but fox news" and the other generally means "all chiefly advertisement supported news you could find a newspaper of or see on cable."
Woke is a word that around the times of George Floyd meant something to the effect of "waking up to the idea of systemic racism and acknowledgement of it's generational consequences." Now it is largely a word used to describe "politically correct" policies or social policies that are contradictory to radical fundamentalist Christianity.
I think you are probably thinking about the previous president's fake news and lying press rhetoric which I don't think is a dog whistle because I don't think most conservative Americans are educated enough to tie that to its Nazi "Lügenpresse" heritage. You generally won't hear someone on the left say "fake news" or "lying press" unless it's in a mocking way.
Contextually all these things can be shibboleths based on context, which is probably more accurate for what you mean than dog whistle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth
Democrats are known for lying for sure. Establishment democrats like Pelosi, definitely. If that's what "left" references OK, I don't really disagree. AOC and Bernie, Stewart, and other progressives are not generally known for lying.
> which is why both sides are constantly bitching at each other.
No. This is some weird false equivalency thing that is popular with "enlightened" people. Some of Americas top brass (Mattis and Milley) have nearly explicitly said that republican dogma is to divide and conquer.
Mattis accused the president of pursuing a divisive strategy.
"[he] is the first president in my lifetime who does not
try to unite the American people— does not even pretend to try.
"Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences
of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the
consequences of three years without mature leadership," he said.
If one party explicitly tries to drive division, you are going to get it. It's no different than Ukraine's lack of unity with Russia. Of course there cannot be unity. Of course they are "bitching at each other." One is attempting to dictate to the other how it is going to be.
> reputation destruction
This is a load and a bad faith argument.
For one, it conflates reputation harm with reputation destruction in order to justify actions that should cause reputational harm. Second, when there is "destruction", it usually follows doubling down on the anti-social behavior that caused the reputational harm in the first place.
A world where reputations can be harmed is absolutely a better world. You can argue that sometimes there is non-proportional harm, ok, but that's not the usual argument. "I am against cancelling" is too often equivalent to "I am against consequences."
The very same people against "canceling" will turn around and claim that a store theft or car window smashing should be punished progressively disproportionately until it is a real deterrent to crime including death. Reputational harm until it is a deterrent to the thing that caused the reputational harm is the very same principle.
It wasn't. The downvote told me that here is the place to be careful about saying thank you. Well, those who downvote against thank you will downvote anything.
No one has claimed that the term "mainstream media" has its origins in far right politics. The claim made upthread is that the term "mainstream media" is a dogwhistle term often employed by the right wing.
I will not be providing evidence of that, as ample enough evidence for that can be found easily with a simple internet search.
I really try to avoid getting sucked into political arguments online, but what you're saying is so absurd and deranged that I can't let it go.
First of all: what exactly do you think the term "dogwhistle" means? Are you suggesting that when RWers say "mainstream media", they really mean something else? To what are they referring?
Secondly, you're going to have to tell me what terms to search for because I just performed several "simple internet searches" and I see no evidence of what you're claiming.
Thirdly, what can be found easily with some simple searches is that "mainstream media" is an extremely common term that's widely used by everybody left, right and center.
E.g. here's Bernie Sanders talking about the "mainstream media":
Here's the Morning Star (a far-left newspaper that was originally founded by the Communist Party of Great Britain) talking about the "mainstream media":
>First of all: what exactly do you think the term "dogwhistle" means? Are you suggesting that when RWers say "mainstream media", they really mean something else? To what are they referring?
No. In fact, I explicitly said the opposite in my comment. Although the term was popularized by the right wing in reference to their belief in a vast leftist conspiracy controlling all forms of media (the thesis under which Fox News was born and the premise by which it claims to be the only valid news source for the right), obviously not every instance of every right winger using the term uses it within that context. However the context does exist and is often employed in right-wing speech.
But given your tone, the fact that you obviously didn't bother to read my comment in good faith, and your personal insults towards me, I won't be engaging with you or your comment any further.
That source doesn't match your claim at all. In fact it completely explains the observed behaviour?
> Most tech related submissions with a hint of political partisanship will quickly be flagged to death by users (or die a slow death due to the inevitable flame war).
High comment rates on a recently posted story will weigh the story down. This is by design, and the quality of comments presently on this story does much to demonstrate the reasoning behind that choice.
Most likely the story will be reposted or "second chance" resurrected in the morning, when all the grownups are awake and not just those of us having a touch of insomnia.
Sometimes when there is an inane story floating around on page one/two, I'll comment on it without up voting; its basically like a downvote as far as the algorithm is concerned.
Meta comments about how the story is ranking or explaining the ranking algorithm to people complaining about how the story is ranking are a great subject for an empty comment.
The lack of information renders such speculation necessarily vacuous, and it quickly degrades into dueling assertions of worldviews. There are lots of websites where that sort of thing runs unchecked. To the extent this isn't one, that's one of the reasons I prefer this one.
Enough at least to reserve substantive comment until I have enough sense of what I'd be talking about to have something worthwhile to say. Takes all kinds to make a world, though.
No, HN has worked this way since long before dang was running it; I believe pg implemented the feature. It's a good feature, in that it tends to bury threads that bring much more heat than light.
No, the presence of the function is not evidence that something is due to that function or the absence of other functions. Many people blindly believe only the speculations that support them and it is unfortunate that much easy confirmation bias believing this misunderstanding has also been observed here due to my not explaining it right away.
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