If you think limited freedom cultures are good for our work go on ahead ignoring this stuff. Or realize that we generally need a good free society to work in and flourish in and these are all precursor warnings to more political crack downs that could drastically curb the hacker scene in the US. There are already increased cases of security researchers getting the SWAT treatment followed by jail. Who thinks thats good. These articles are digging deeper into the why this is happening trying to look for ways to prevent it before it tanks the US tech scene.
I'd say that's relevant but if you disagree put your fingers in your ears, close your eyes and wait another decade and we'll see
Between this and the PRISM stories, some hackers seem to think the interesting new phenomenon of a US surveillance state run by warlords is just as important to talk about as the Nth new javascript framework or blog post about MVPs.
I, personally, like that HN is talking more about politics. We have to build our technology with politics in mind. Accompany technology with good politics(in the meaning of ethics and society and communities) and use(where's possible) technology to route around bad politics.
From [1], "McKenzie Wark talks about the new class of hackers, a direct social manifestation of the intellectual property laws. According to Wark hackers are the people capable of forcing the sign/information system to creatively transform."
Since hackers transform the sign/information system, they inherently infringe upon AND establish authority. This puts us incidentally in the same position as other authority, such as police.
An article like this makes you wonder how many different diseases (answer - over 200) get lumped together under the large "cancer" umbrella.
One wonders if we are doing ourselves a disservice maintaining a term more inline with shared symptoms instead of separating the diseases into shared causes.
At any rate I'm digressing, but cancer is a fascinating (while horrible) concept that exists in our reality. When you think about it, it is probably more responsible for what we are today than any other force on the planet, in evolutionary terms.
As for AIDS: The fact that it was a "gay disease" hampered everything about our response to it. I'd like to think that we would be much more in tune with emerging health threats these days, but somehow I doubt it. I really hope we have HIV licked in a few years though, because Africa really, really needs a vaccine before it can do anything else really.
I always though cancer was an umbrella term for when a cell mutates in such a fashion to lose it's reproductive throttle, and consequently starts consuming as many resources as possible, eventually fragmenting and spreading throughout the body.
There are many genetic determinants of whether you will develop a cancer, or a particular type of cancer.
People with FAP, or HNPCC, or other proto-oncogene mutations such as BRCA2 will have a very high probability of developing a specific cancer in their lifetime.
But the mutation that leads to cancer is a spontaneous event, that is allowed to occur due to a failure of cellular regulation.
There are many viral causes of cancer, as OP mentions HPV for cervical and penile cancer. Other strains of HPV are linked to SCc (a form of skin cancer) and throat cancer.
Hepatitis C will cause liver failure and Hepatocellulr carcinoma in approx 20% of infected patients.
Infection with H. Pylori can predispose to gastric carcinoma.
Additionally exposure to various 'environments' can lead to cancer - if you have GORD you can develop Barett's Oesophsgus due to the gastric acid irritating lower oesophageal mucosa, which can predispose to oesophageal cancer. if you are an alcoholic you can develop cirrhosis and later Hepatocellular carcinoma due to prolonged inflammation in the liver.
If you are pale skinned and live in a sunny climate you are at higher risk for melanoma and if you eat a poor diet you have an increased risk of colon cancer.
Smoking and exposure to smoke can give you lung, oropharynx, stomach and bladder cancer.
As of yet we have no idea what, of any, are associations for many of the Brain, bone or Kidney cancers (excluding some toxins for kidney cancer).
Possibly there is no cause.
But in all of these cases, the mutation still arises 'spontaneously'. That is, we all have a probability of developing a mutation that can cause cancer every time a cell divides in our body. In people with Li-Fraumeni syndrome, who have a mutation of p53, almost everyone will develop cancer by the time they are in their 40s. So we know the rate of gene knockout is quite high over our lives, and if it wasn't for immunosurvielance, we would likely fall prey to cancer much faster than we do anyway..
All having a risk factor or infection does is increase the probability that a cell will 'spontaneously' develop a mutation that will make it cancerous, and having more of these mutated cells arising increases the chance that one will evade immunosurviellance and continue to grow and expand.
Bottom line: as a doctor I see all cancers as spontaneous. You could say that x causes y, and in many cases there is a strong association, but in no case is that association as strong as, say, life leading to death, for which there is a correlation coefficient approaching 1.
While I appreciate the information and agree that it's pragmatically spontaneous my point was that I was suggesting we'll find that it won't be the case if and when we gain a deeper understanding, which we may never do.
I don't know but the sarcoma the articles says is a symptom present in the last stages of AIDS, when the body is covered with brown "patches" - mostly in the back.
Other doctors were investigating other issues at the time, like a strong TB. But it took time for all this different specialists see it was one illness.
The first-world people with access to world class health care that contracted it in urban environments were gay. Origins however, are a bit more murky.
Most of the worlds population don't have the financial resources or the proximity to say, the UCSF medical hospital, where such specialty physicians would be to study such a thing.
There's been quite a bit of discussion of how it got to Christopher Street in New York. My pet theory is that the international drug trade had quite a bit to do with it, but I'm just a computer programmer
From Wiki:
At one point, the CDC coined the phrase "the 4H disease", since the syndrome seemed to affect Haitians, homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and heroin users. In the general press, the term "GRID", which stood for gay-related immune deficiency, had been coined.[180] However, after determining that AIDS was not isolated to the gay community,[178] it was realized that the term GRID was misleading and the term AIDS was introduced at a meeting in July 1982.[181] By September 1982 the CDC started referring to the disease as AIDS.[182]
What motivates web designers to tell stories by repurposing the scroll mechanism instead of, say, using video?
I can only speak for myself, but I rarely, if ever, watch website videos, especially at work.
I made it through this entire thing by scrolling.
While I understand video is sometimes the best way to convey an idea, I fricken hate it. It would need to be something very, very intriguing for me to watch. 99% of websites selling things don't fall into that category.
Partially agreed. But I think the notion of protesting in a virtual fashion should not be diminished, but rather encouraged as long as it can do some good. To that end, I encourage anyone who has this sentiment to consider donating to charity on behalf of the cause as a demonstration of its importance [1]. I've chosen the EFF as the charity for my symbolic donation as I stay home with family on this Independence Day. But several other mainstream charity options are available. (Note that the linked site is my side project, and I apologize for the grievous self-promotion.)
Media is a sucker for anything social media, they would probably run a longer news segment on this online protest than they would chaos in the streets. Last workers riot where I live the media solely concentrated on how they were caught from facebook and other social media profiles, they hardly mentioned the reasons for the rioting.
And the media is the next best thing to an online petition surrounded by ads... ephemeral bullshit to hold attention while we show you commercials.
If they aren't afraid of you burning down their palace, they are not about to change.
Why do people in the US think that change comes from meaningless, one-click bullshit? In Egypt, the military says GTFO. In Syria, they can take up arms and say GTFO and have it not work. You didn't see arabs using twitter for the "retweet this if you want change." It was the get over to street a and b and mob.
Peaceful sit-ins on unused public land, out of the way of the entrenched interests is something to lampoon... nothing to be afraid of. You can't put a poster of Ghandi up on the wall and be taken seriously.
Peaceful resistance is standing in the way of the tank and letting the entrenched powers present themselves to the horror of the world. They will either turn popular sentiment strongly enough that they are taken away, changed, of they will stand down from stupidity.
It's like not forcing legislators to actually filibuster on their feet. Tweet-it-in resistance is worthless.
Stand up, step in, and cross the line if you mean it. Otherwise STFU and GTFO.
Sometimes I feel like everyone else took a history class where the pages of the textbooks were filled with change brought about without violence being done unto someone.
It would seem Twitter and FB have figured out a way to monetize that.
Not sure if you're seeing my statement as advocating non-violent, but confrontational methods... that was the intent. Non-violence without any depth of coverage is a tree falling in the woods with nobody there. You need visibility while being non-violent and catalyzing. You must be present and visible to embody the narrative that enables peoples' opinions to be matched with yours. Who takes the internet hate machine seriously?
If you are similar or the same in fundamental, value/moral terms, others are able to identify with you and see how your plight/demands and their aspirations for themselves are the same.
Online petitions are worthless. You need videos that tell the story - like Mitt Romney and his 47%. You need students getting pepper-sprayed. Overreach and douche-baggery strengthen resolve for the believers and give second-thought to anyone trying to reconcile their better selves with the crappier elements of their own side.
Non-violence means little if you are not causing people to deal with you. Nobody is called to account for an online petition or a peaceful protest covered lightly as a hippie revival.
You have to push the envelope and make it uncomfortable - something requiring answers.
Yeah, I agree. Violence is basically unavoidable at some level. I prefer true non-violence as the solution to problems, which is why I have a problem with labeling Gandhi's version of violence as non-violence. I think it's better understood as extreme passive aggression.
Agreed, although the top comment here was actually quite interesting.
HN has made an exception for all things US gov't spying related. I even lost my flagging rights for flagging all the snowden stuff (which I thought was exactly what you were supposed to do when you thought something was off topic... not my fault it was the entire front page!)
It's an important topic, but like you I preferred when HN was an oasis of tech away from this nonsense.
It's an important topic, but like you I preferred when HN was an oasis of tech away from this nonsense.
Unfortunately, politics have invaded our tech oasis, and I don't mean HN. The politicization and militarization of technology is undeniable; at this point, retreating to some new oasis and denying it won't make it go away. While I do want a site where I can see more articles about Erlang and lambda calculus, for now at least, I can accept the pressing need to maintain focus on political issues that undermine our ability to build the technology we want and have it used for good instead of evil.
>The politicization and militarization of technology is undeniable
You make this statement as if it was some sort of new happening. This is as old as technology itself. Finding new ways to kill each other has been the number one driver of technology progress, and always has been.
Ah, the web was invented to keep military sites in communication (presumably so that they could keep killing people) while the rest of the world was dying a horrible, nuclear death. So it kinda was.
I strongly agree that there is too much "shallowly interesting" stuff, rather than "deeply interesting" stuff on HN.
It's a shame that people who flag "too much" fluff lose their flagging ability. I flag 4 submissions per day; I still have my flag button. I upvote good articles on new. I've been restricting my comments on the fluff articles. I've been upvoting the comments in good submission threads.
Perhaps someone could create an "HN-Shallowly-interesting"?
As per the article: You are not in anyway immune to the same processes that you are complaining your parents are beholden to.
Your views and experiences are reinforcing your own beliefs that your parents are not accepting the "facts" you know. Seeing one side as "unreasonable" to logic while your view is "obvious" is exactly the type of behaviour the article is attempting to underline.
Maybe I should re-read the article, but I have a need to further explain my line of thought. I myself have no need to hold strong beliefs. I tend to accept overwhelming evidence from sources that seem credible and I will often juggle opposing views, perhaps even never forming a firm opinion on a subject. But I see a lot of people struggling with that, like never choosing a side or forming a conclusion will kill them or something. It's the same when people think never changing opinions (e.g. political) is a sign of good character.
Also, I am more interested in technology, science, nature etc. than other people and their lives. It seems that my parents', but maybe even the majority of "ordinary" folk's lives, revolves around what other people say, think or do. So much so, they interpret everybody's actions as intentional and try to explain a person's motives and will paint somebody's character based on some trivial event. For example, if I forget to call them, they'll perhaps discuss for hours how ungrateful and selfish I am and fabricate detailed explanations for my actions, e.g. how maybe my girlfriend's mother is pulling me away from them or something like that (I heard such stories from my brother).
In short, people try to find a (hidden) motive behind every action and think there always has to be one. I think it is this way of thinking and functioning that creates a fertile ground for conspiracy theorists.
Somewhat oversimplifying, you can think of hierarchical individualists as akin to conservative Republicans, and egalitarian communitarians as liberal Democrats.
Somewhat? That's like saying that black is a dark colour like navy blue and white is more like royal blue.
Personally, I think the US would benefit by understanding just where in the overall spectrum they fit politically and how limited their "typical" options are.
Americans probably have the most limited options of any modern democracy on the planet, and yet most people think they are so different.
Seriously, this article, and all 22 comments of this discussion belong on reddit.