Edward Snowden on The Joe Rogan Experience [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efs3QRr8LWw <comment><USER2> Snowden's book really speaks to me on so many levels. As a hacker, as a boy growing up in the new age of the Internet. As a person who experienced 9/11 and never aligned with the direction it took the USA. As a person who questions my identity and the messages I get about identity on a daily basis.

He will be remembered for a long time because of the actions he took, but if he had not done anything else, his book would be remembered on its own as a discourse on what being human means in these times. But, it will never be viewed on its own, and that is a tragedy.

Pardon Snowden.

<comment><USER3> I used to agree with this but now that I've seen where this path leads, I think he should be given a fair trial and judged. Our government and the security of 350M US citizens cannot be held at the whim of a single hacker, no matter how right he believed himself to be. Our Congress has 535 members for precisely this reason, the president answers to Congress and is not a king, and even the Chief Justice does not rule absolutely. Snowden was brave, but he was also wrong. He should be judged fairly by a jury of his peers and that trial should be held in a transparent, fair and open trial for all to see. How many years now has he had to prepare his defense? It's plenty. Let's get the trial going.

<comment><USER4> He was not wrong. So many people define right and wrong by some system of made up rules and laws, and if someone breaks those rules or laws, even for right, people still say "they should be held accountable" as if the rule and law matter more than anything. The bad guys don't follow those rules and laws and exposing them for that, even if it violates said rules and laws, is not "wrong". It's brave and moral and right. If I was on that jury he would get a "not guilty" or jury nullification from me because despite what rules and laws he may have technically violated the system was wrong, not him. I don't care about idealistic excuses like "he should have....." because those things don't work as history proves over and over again. There are times the ends justify the means. Life is not a series of black and white rules or rule violations. The only wrong part about all of this is that they were spying on everyone to begin with, lied about it, and that nothing has been done about it since everyone was made aware. They have done a fantastic job of convincing the masses Snowden is the REAL bad guy. Shameful. If anyone insists on a trial it should be of the USG for its nefarious activities. Not the little guy for exposing them.

<comment><USER5> There's this concept of punching up or down. The little guy shouldn't be punched down to - in conventional politically correct culture.

Mostly the legal system is not encouraged to be politically correct.

Mr. Snowden broke his oath and leaked confidential data. His defense is the greater good. That should prevent prosecution.

Mr. Clapper lied to Congress when he said "Not Wittingly."

Mrs. Clinton failed to safeguard confidential data.

Others have broken the law, and they are not prosecuted.

We should prosecute those who break the law. They should defend themselves accordingly.

The real solution to this mess is for Congress to pass a law that exposing illegal activities is allowed. Wait - they did! The whistleblower protections don't work. More corruption.

<comment><USER6> > His defense is the greater good. That should prevent prosecution.

Do you mean prevent conviction or are you taking the stance claiming "the greater good" means you shouldn't be tried?

<comment><USER5> I meant if he were tried, he should be found not guilty.

Separately, because what he did is prima facie for the greater good, he should not be tried.

<comment><USER6> A jury or pardon could conceivably provide the first, but the latter would require a movement away from the rule of law. Outside of a jury or prosecutor, who has claim to make the call that what he did was for the greater good?

<comment><USER5> The prosecutor is sufficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a real lesson here about just how cavalier the American government - and to some degree the public - is about civil liberties, but that isn't the biggest problem.

The problem here isn't even so much the government is being shady - that has happened before, it will happen again. I can understand people not feeling threatened by constant snooping even though I disagree.

To me the real problem is how effectively the government has kept this subject from creeping into the public debate. The scary part is the secret laws and precedents that elected officials aren't allowed to even tell their constituents about. Government officials are not reliable; this is far to much unaccountable power even if people involved were allowed to discuss what is happening.

Why aren't the not-technically-interesting parts of this wiretapping program legal for government agencies to talk about? If they need to be hidden, why not go straight to the logical conclusion and classify a bunch of other laws?

Democracies can't handle this level of secrecy. The whole thing is going to fall apart one way or another - the path America is going down isn't stable at all; something is going to have to change radically. Either the intelligence agencies will gain supremacy over the government, the government itself will go rogue or the secrecy will have to end.

 _EDIT_ I'm going to bed before I see the whole video, but around 1:46:00 - the bit with J. Clapper. Case in point that the whole system of checks and balances can't work.

 _EDIT2_ And around 2:10:00. Barbaric stuff; it is like centuries of accumulated Common Law and parliamentary legal tradition never happened. People need to be able to occasionally talk about this stuff in formal setting.

<comment><USER8> There is a big difference between Observation (which is what Snowden is doing) and Analysis (followed by Solutions). It's not healthy to confuse the two.

Snowden is pointing out an issue. And he has done it with courage that I massively respect. You hardly see it these days. And that makes it anxiety and fear inducing, as the solutions are unknown.

But think of it this way - tomorrow someone might hand you a diagnosis of cancer. You can freak out about it or you can find a Cancer specialist to see what options are available. Asking the technician who gave you the report what the odds are, doesn't make any sense. He knows only how to create the report.

In this case just look to history, to understand how these things play out. History is the Oncologist.

Intelligence agencies have hard problems to deal with. On top of it, they are giant bureaucracies which means cockups, incompetence, turf wars, hiding issues are the norm. All that amplifies the problems, causes defensiveness, over-reactions and reactions to reactions.

If you read the history (and these days there are tons of resources) this sequence of events (of overreach) has unfolded a thousand times. There are a whole bunch programmes that have been shutdown because one group or the other got carried away or did damage. That history (in out current environment of over information/disinformation/misinformation) is what will always be a source of hope and faith.

<comment><USER9> The difference here is that the oncologist doesn't just observe.

The oncologist deals with the consequences of the observation: communicate with the patient, gives advices on treatments, makes a therapy plan, deals with families, answer to their questions, takes the hit when the relatives think that the solution is not good enough or an Indian shaman could cure everything with snake's poison.

Snowden have done good, but escaped from the consequences of his actions.

A position that made everything he's done questionable

Had he faced a trial, even the most unfair of trials, would have put him in the position of being at least true to the values he was trying to protect.

Question the authority, suffer the consequences.

Question the authority, go to Russia is not what generally the public opinion accepts as "honest".

There is much to say also about who leaked the data but didn't protect the source.

The identity of deep throat has been made public after Nixon was already dead for years and Mark Felt was already an old man suffering from dementia.

<comment><USER10> I don't think there was ever a question about hiding his identity - the govt was after him before he'd even left Hong Kong or any leak had been published. At the time he said he didn't care what happened to him.

I find it interesting that you posit Deep Throat's approach as somehow more noble. If Snowden had anonymously leaked and kept on working would that have been less questionable or more honest?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Snowden is really clever with these interviews. Right away in the interview he establishes his concerns about the government, then briefly mentions the government smear campaign against him without hanging on the point too much. He calmly explains himself in an articulate way, establishing himself as perfectly sane. Then he reaches out to connect and empathize with his interviewer:

> When I hear you just speak, I go "actually this is a thoughtful guy."

When he validates Joe, he validates Joe's audience, and it becomes Snowden's audience. He did this with Trevor Noah too; I think he's intentional about it while very cleverly appearing not to be. It's a good thing Snowden is the one who blew that whistle, and not somebody less calculating.

<comment><USER12> Oh, man. I completely disagree. I feel like he just talks and talks about whatever he wants to talk about with almost no regard for whether his technical language is being understood or if he's dominating the discussion or anything like that. I don't think I've seen him develop a natural rapport with anyone or even make a firm, memorable point in an interview. I'll always be grateful for his leaks but over 2.5 hours he just became a soft background murmur in my room.

<comment><USER13> You'll _love_ the John Carmack episode then :)

<comment><USER14> The Carmack episode was great but the follow-up questions I wanted to ask Carmack and what Joe Rogan actually follows-up was a bit disappointing.

<comment><USER15> JRE is breadth first search, within a certain...domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The success of Joe Rogan is fascinating and encouraging.

For a long time there was a view that attention spans were diminishing. Facebook and Tik Tok reduced content to the smallest possible dosage.

But look at this. This is one of the world's most popular podcasts and it's nearly three hours long. You see it too in TV: what is a Netflix series but a 13 hour movie?

I see a definite trend towards long form content right now, which I think is quite positive.

<comment><USER17> Until you listen to his actual content and it is, the vast majority of the time, pretty "easy" listening in the sense that it is pretty vacuous and doesn't really require any sort of concentration to follow along. Don't get me wrong -- I listen to it often on my way to work, but one of the reasons I do is because it is not something that really requires much of my concentration to follow along.

<comment><USER18> That's not necessarily a negative. Rogan is wide not deep. The eclectic guest selection means listeners are exposed to a wide range of ideas. Well, at least as wide as the guests Rogan can book, and the topics and people that interest him personally.

The show is successful because it knows that Google exists - it knows there's a universe of information outside the bounds of the show. It provides the gestalt and it's up to the listener to explore the details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Snowden: But I didn't come forward to be safe. If I wanted to be safe, I'd still be sitting in Hawaii, making a hell of a lot money, to spy on you.

<comment><USER20> Does the NSA actually pay well?

<comment><USER21> He said that he'd make ~2x at the NSA as what he'd make in an equivalent private sector job, so it seems that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> His podcasts are infinitely better than any amount of talking-head punditry available on the major news networks. I've not run across one yet that wasn't well-reasoned, patient, and interesting - even if I didn't agree with conclusions being made or the thought processes expressing them.

<comment><USER23> Be careful, because his podcast is a bit of an echo chamber.

The other day he set up a debate on nutrition where he covered the topic of heart disease, and he put a cardiologist (Dr. Khan) with 20 years of experience debating with an acupuncturist (Kris Kresser) on the causes of heart disease.

And he kept interrupting the doctor and taking the acupuncturist side on the most absurd claims.

He is also into things like moon landing conspiracies and all that good stuff that generate a lot of internet traffic, but I think in a bit of a hypocritical way as I'm pretty sure he doesn't really believe in any of that stuff and just talks about it for the clicks.

<comment><USER24> Dr. Khan is not just a cardiologist, he's a vegan and my problem with him specifically and with veganism in general is that it's often ideological.

Chris Kresser is not an "acupuncturist". And this is a classic ad-hominen ;-)

Joe kept interrupting Khan because Khan was avoiding answering the asked questions.

And Chris kept mentioning the elephant in the room, which is that the randomized-controlled trials (the gold standard in nutrition) don't show a statistically significant link between heart disease and meat or saturated fat consumption and that's a fact, being also the subject of recent meta analysis, that used GRADE to reach the conclusion that there is no good evidence for the claim that meat causes cancer and that adults should probably continue their current meat consumption:

[https://examine.com/nutrition/red-meat-is-good-for-you- now/](https://examine.com/nutrition/red-meat-is-good-for-you-now/)

This isn't to say that meat or saturated fat is good or bad, but if listening to such a podcast causes anger at the people daring to question a "cardiologist with 20 years of experience", then maybe you should consider that you yourself have stepped in the land of ideology / religion and that's just not compatible with science or health for that matter.

<comment><USER23> It's his formal training, he is a licensed acupuncturist. The man has absolutely no business talking about heart disease, especially with an experienced cardiologist.

The problem of putting someone with acupuncture training debating a cardiologist is that, in the eyes of that huge audience, he presents those opinions as perfectly equivalent, alternative to each other and equally valid.

When in fact, one person has basically no idea of what he is talking about, but in the eyes of the public, and because they are put side by side, they are seen as equivalent when they are not.

Why not put him against a non-vegan cardiologist then? Someone at least with equivalent training.

From a scientific point of view, the only diet that as ever shown to stop the progression of heart disease is a whole-food plant-based diet.

Khan replied to the questions, not sure why you are saying he avoided anything. It's obvious that Joe took Kresser side during the debate.

What kind of tough questions did he ask Kresser compared to Khan?

<comment><USER25> > It's his formal training, he is a licensed acupuncturist. The man has > absolutely no business talking about heart disease, especially with an > experienced cardiologist.

This is an extremely closed minded view—not everyone with formal training is automatically an expert. This is the appeal to authority fallacy, and a poor one at that.

> From a scientific point of view, the only diet that as ever shown to stop > the progression of heart disease is a whole-food plant-based diet.

This is not true either, and I find it ironic it's stated authoritatively with no sources.

<comment><USER23> Not everyone with formal training is an expert, but its the minimum requirement. Literally no one without formal training can be an expert in such a complex topic as heart disease.

Why is Joe Rogan asking about heart disease to a licensed acupuncturist in a podcast with 60 million downloads a month? It's like asking for legal advice from a massage therapist.

If you had heart disease or someone in your family had it, would you ask an acupuncturist for advice?

For the sources:

"proved decades ago that heart disease could be reversed solely with diet and lifestyle change"

[https://nutritionfacts.org/video/our-number-one-killer- can-b...](https://nutritionfacts.org/video/our-number-one-killer-can-be- stopped/)

The video is a summary of the studies listed via the "Sources cited" button, that you find scrolling down after the video.

<comment><USER26> > Not everyone with formal training is an expert, but its the minimum > requirement. Literally no one without formal training can be an expert in > such a complex topic as heart disease.

I have no bone in this particular fight. I'm inclined to agree with you, most of the time, but it's clearly possible to be an expert in nearly anything without formal training:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan)

Lots of absolutes in this discussion, but reality is usually far more nuanced.

<comment><USER23> It depends, if looking for advise on how to use excel from someone, I don't think that they need to be certified or whatever.

For asking someone to do some web design or a logo, I don't think it's necessary either, but there is a limit somewhere.

Think about this way, if you yourself or someone in your family would have heart disease, would you take advice from an acupuncturist?

I bet you wouldn't. What are the odds that Kris Kresser without any formal training or experience managed to better understand the science behind such a complex topic like heart disease than full-time scientists and cardiologists?

Self-learning is great for a lot of things, but heart disease is likely not one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is the first time, and maybe it's just because of the length of the interview; that I've noticed Snowden's being slightly untethered from sensibility. The first 10 minutes in particular was a little worrisome.

I imagine that being stuck in Russia, with the pressure he's under has contributed to this. I do wonder how much of this personality bubble was in place when he made the decisions he did.

Nevertheless, I do have a love hate relationship with what he did.

<comment><USER28> Out of curiosity, what about the things he did do you "hate"?

<comment><USER27> Love - revealed to us that our constitutional rights were being absolutely trampled to death.

Hate - revealed to the world endless amounts of national security data that was not directly relevant to these constitutional encroachments.

<comment><USER29> > Hate - revealed to the world endless amounts of national security data that > was not directly relevant to these constitutional encroachments.

He worked with journalists in order to avoid this. He gave the government a head's up before the press released anything everytime they released something new.

What more do you think he should have done?

<comment><USER30> If he really wanted to be treated as a whistleblower, he should have only leaked the specific things that he took issue with, not grab anything he could get his hands on and give it out. For example, there's no good reason for him to give documents to China that tell them which Chinese computers NSA has access to [0]. This myth that he responsibly leaked information needs to die.

[0] [https://www.scmp.com/news/hong- kong/article/1260306/edward-s...](https://www.scmp.com/news/hong- kong/article/1260306/edward-snowden-classified-us-data-shows-hong-kong- hacking-targets)

<comment><USER29> You're completely misrepresenting this.

He didn't give them any documents, he didn't tell them all the computers, he only _showed_ them a sample of them. They were also only civilian computers.

I think civilians all over the world had a right to know that they were being spied on by the U.S. government. What difference does it make if a person is a U.S. citizen or a Hong Kong citizen? Human rights are human rights.

<comment><USER31> Every other government, including the Chinese, are spying on US civilians as well. And in this case, it seems like the Chinese civilians were the kinds of civilians any other country would be spying on as well. I haven't seen a convincing argument for Snowden or others as to why he took documents unrelated to domestic spying. If he had only whistleblew the domestic stuff, I bet a lot more politicians would be open to pardoning him.

<comment><USER32> If a Russian citizen published documents proving that the Russian government was extensively spying on Americans, I doubt you would condemn the leaker. I wouldn't.

<comment><USER31> If I were Russian, I probably would. As an American, I'd be indifferent to both the leaker and the spying activity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have to be honest here, I was very disappointed with this episode. It's basically a very long monologue and feels like a marketing gig for his book and not like a podcast with Edward Snowden. For someone who's familiar with Snowden and his story, this had very little informational value.

I would've wished they talked about a bit more about other topics to see what Snowden and his opinions are like outside of the general theme of mass surveillance. At the 2 hour mark, Joe tries to switch and asks about his current day-to-day life. But they switch back to the main theme after about 10 minutes.

<comment><USER34> I think Joe's style benefits from being physically in the same room as the interviewee. Had it not been a remote interview I think it would have gone very differently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Let's not forget Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange who are currently unable to give interviews because of what the United States is doing to them.

<comment><USER36> Conflating of Chelsea Manning and Assange with Snowden's efforts is the crux of a very successful campaign to bury him behind claims of treason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> TLDW;

Edward Snowden: How Your Cell Phone Spies on You:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFns39RXPrU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFns39RXPrU)

Edward Snowden on America and Russia's Diplomatic Woes:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k19Ipq0TV8Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k19Ipq0TV8Y)

</comment><comment><USER38> Someone made a comment that Joe Rogan is the dumb man's celebrity smart guy. I tend to agree, but I do enjoy some of his podcasts.

<comment><USER39> I would take the inverse. Joe Rogan is the smart man's celebrity dumb guy. I as well enjoy some of his podcasts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Snowden inspired me to immerse myself in learning more about modern information technology.

He caused me to question what it means to be a patriot.

He drove me to learn about the importance of open-source encryption software for storing (VeraCrypt) and transporting data through networks (VPN).

Knowledge is your power over your government.

</comment><comment><USER41> 1\. First time I've seen Joe with Airpods

2\. First time Joe has done a podcast with someone OTA (as far as I know)

<comment><USER42> For 2 its not like he had a choice to do it in person...

<comment><USER41> Right. Only other scenario that would work is for Joe to fly over there... which probably wouldn't happen.

Regardless, Joe's getting so many good interviews in the past two years.

<comment><USER43> > Only other scenario that would work is for Joe to fly over there... which > probably wouldn't happen.

I wouldn't want to see a Sean Penn/El Chapo incident[0] happen with these two.

[0] [https://theintercept.com/2016/01/12/sean-penn-el-chapo- opsec...](https://theintercept.com/2016/01/12/sean-penn-el-chapo-opsec/)

<comment><USER44> Different circumstances: Snowden's location is well-known, he's protected via political asylum. El Chapo on the other hand was being hunted by the local government so he was dependent on his location remaining secret.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This seems like the perfect post to showcase a little weekend project of mine.

I kind of wanted to checkout Joes podcasts on the go, but I don't want to listen to the whole 2 or 3 hours. Instead, a list of topics with timestamps would be much better. So I hacked together a little feed and a player doing just that.

This episode is also already live:

[https://joeroganplayer.com/episodes/1368](https://joeroganplayer.com/episodes/1368)

Granted, it's all done manually at the moment, but I share the work with friends also interested in this.

</comment><comment><USER46> Man Edward wanted to talk. Joe barely talks let alone get a question in for the first 20min.

<comment><USER47> Many of the best Joe Rogan podcasts are those where he mostly listens.

Joe Rogan Experience #1214 - Lawrence Lessig is really good one.

<comment><USER48> Your point is valid and that was a great episode as well but I think the __best __episodes are those where he questions and prods the guest to expound far beyond talking points, to give what is essentially a statement of philosophy after which Joe then dissects the points enumerated in that statement of philosophy. What makes Joe 's process of doing this so compelling is that he's not doing it with an agenda to change the guest's mind about something but to deeply and truly understand WHAT the person believes, WHY they believe it, HOW that affects and influences their live and decisions and why that person thinks other should agree with them. Another thing that is great about Rogan's guests is that he doesn't limit the guest list to people who agree with him. If Adolf Hitler were alive today (and spoke English) Joe would not only interview him but get him to not only enumerate all of his beliefs but then explain why he hold those beliefs to be true. This process of explication is IMPOSSIBLE in the mainstream media and allows the listener to get to raw, fundamental truths at the base layer. It's a shame that not all Americans (and non-Americans too) have the intellectual curiosity and patience to REALLY LISTEN to and understand why people of different political, religious, and ideological beliefs hold the positions they do and then amicably coexist with them in respectful disagreement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I love the long form discussion. I feel I can actually here someones thoughts and perspectives rather than short meaningless soundbites. The lack of guests shouting over each other is great as well. He has also exposed me to some wonderful thinkers like Sean Carrol who I otherwise would not have come across.

<comment><USER50> to be honest, he's made me appreciate Ben Shapiro which didn't feel incredibly likely going in.

Prior to that, my experience with Shapiro was the stupid videos people would share on Facebook of him "OWNING the libs." So I expected an absolutely terrible interview where I was going to be disgusted with the guy constantly. Granted, I don't agree with him on a lot, much at all really, but when he's just talking out his views on points, I appreciated the candor as to reasoning for various things on his end.

My takeaway from it, outside of the "for the clicks" YouTube videos that are shared, is that while I may not agree with him on a lot, when he is explaining his points and not going for the jugular, I feel like he isn't questioning my intelligence by tossing various falsehoods at me constantly that I then have to go look up. Instead, it is typically analysis of a situation followed by a conclusion I don't personally reach typically.

And had it not been for the Shapiro interviews on JRE, I'd have just continued to outright ignore this guy as another "provocateur" out for the clicks and shares.

<comment><USER51> I agree, it's very interesting to listen to Shapiro reason his own beliefs as he talks.

It definitely helps me to see how other people might think about a topic which they may not be able to articulate well.

He certainly reaches some strange conclusions, but it is fascinating to see how someone gets to that point and try to better understand other viewpoints.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Snowden mentioned something about Android and iOS refusing to implement his idea about cutting network access to specific apps. He said they claim it's a security risk. What is the security risk and where can I see the discussion about this feature?

</comment><comment><USER53> Yung Haimie killing it this week,

Just finished listening to richard dawkins earlier this week

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bN4spt3744](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bN4spt3744)

</comment><comment><USER54> Joe Rogan's booking and showrunning team(s) needs a lot more credit where it's due.

The politically and professionally diverse guests they are able to get, no doubt with the assistance of Joe himself, is absolutely incredible. You rarely see a show where you can have an extreme right wing radio host be a guest, only to have a slew of high profile left wing candidates on months later, with zero fucks given in making sure it's family-friendly.

</comment><comment><USER55> I can't help but feel Snowden comes off as a frustrated naive insider spilling details out of disappointment. Lacking perspective here. Most of his points are basically peter's principle, hierarchy failure, internal competition, all traits that made the response to national threats inappropriate before and after 9/11.

I really don't think that his actions were clearly thought out and he won't get a pass any time soon.

<comment><USER56> I'm not quite clear on your point, are you implying that if Snowden had more perspective on the subject he wouldn't have become a whistleblower?

The second half of your first paragraph suggests otherwise so I'm kinda confused.

<comment><USER55> Sorry, also I was only half way through the interview.

My conclusion is that part of his reveal was clearly naive and that it doesn't have any value regarding citizens or national improvement (incompetence in big groups ? color me surprised).

He would have been more beneficial to sleep on the knowledge for a while, filter what's important and find better leverage to make a change. Something less naive.

When he talks, only very rarely I hear something relevant. At best, his good points are:

\- shift toward abusing surveillance technology

\- paradoxical laws regarding accountability of the government (you cannot have a fair assessment of government actions if it's illegal to look at it)

\- a bad government can abuse long stored data against you

But really he's babbling for hours and very few comes out at even surprising. NSA had access to network/deep packets long before Google and even 9/11\. Yes we all have smartphones.. boohoo, it's well known that these are potential privacy backdoors. People just don't care, or at best the rich enough will buy an iphone (if Apple is really that good regarding crypto and privacy).

Again, that's just an opinion right now, if someone can shed a light on what's important in his case, please do, I'll read carefully.

ps: there's also a lot of moments where he's mostly telling his life which I find disturbingly immature in tone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Just a friendly reminder : [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/us/politics/edward- snowde...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/us/politics/edward-snowden-at- nsa-sexually-explicit-photos-often-shared.html)

Theses guys just shared naked pics of peoples ...

This kind of power corrupt ...

</comment><comment><USER58> It's not strange many interesting people want to visit Joe Rogan podcast.

First, he is willing to give a voice to many who won't be able to tell their stories on mass media.

Who other will let speak people like James Damore? What major broadcaster is willing to interview Jordan Peterson without protraiting him as a villain?

He respects his guest, when in disagrement. His interview to Jack Dorsey (not much of his liking, I presume), was criticised for not being aggresive enough.

The interviewed is not afraid of a headline out of context.

Given the current political climate, I'm not suprised a MMA guy is capable of doing what most journalists don't.

<comment><USER59> I question the value of letting people like James Damore and Jordan Peterson speak on such a big platform.

Edit: The people downvoting me are hypocrites. The function of downvoting to make something less visible. Are you saying what I say has less value and should therefore have a lesser platform?

But to be serious, everyone acknowledges that what some people say is of more value than what other people say, and should be seen by more people. We just disagree on what the things that have value are. And your insistence on arguing about the former, rather than the latter is tiresome and dishonest.

<comment><USER44> Yes, we should selectively filter people whose ideas we don't like from being able to speak them to any audience. In fact I question the value of letting people like <person whose ideas you value> speak on such a big platform.

/s

Surely you understand that what you're suggesting here is totalitarian? The value you mention is the strengthening of a society where freedom of ideas is considered a core value.

<comment> john-radio Your "totalitarian" remark is such a shameless misrepresentation of what the person you're talking to is saying that you might as well be talking to yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> If I watch anymore JRE at all it's going to be in a "private" tab. Not that Youtube recommendations/suggestions are good anyway, but watching JRE absolutely destroys them

Though, as much airtime as Rogan has given to conspiracy theories- I guess it makes sense that it turns my recommendations into absolute nonsense

</comment><comment><USER61> After reading the book, the interview seems mostly like a narration of the book. I surely could have covered a lot more new ground in 2 hours.

</comment><comment><USER62> Finally. This, I'm looking forward to watch.

My unpopular opinion: Whistleblowers shouldn't be punished in a rogue state.

</comment><comment><USER63> Joe Rogan is very pro-institution so it's going to be a very interesting video.

</comment><comment><USER64> Is there a RSS feed of his podcast?

</comment><comment><USER65> did Rogan manage to mention trans athletes, #metoo, triggered people, gorillas or dmt in this episode?

</comment><comment><USER66> this video hit 1,712,029 views at 4:50pm, from 600,000 just around noon. omg... : )

</comment><comment><USER67> We live in a time where the president of the United States himself questions any law that inconveniences him personally, same goes for any oversight, and he retains a great deal of support from the population and his own party.

I wonder how / if it is possible to convince the public that laws and oversight are necessary for good government.

<comment><USER68> _"When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."_

\- Richard Nixon

The attitude is not a new phenomenon at all.

<comment><USER69> I don't think we should look to the only president to resign from office for examples of what to expect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> This guy is on a roll!

</comment><comment><USER71> What is democracy?

<comment><USER72> Democracy is a system of government where the three powers: law giving, executive, and judicial are separated and at least the law giving is in the hands of (representatives of) the people.

In the case of the massive spying by government we are dealing with secret laws and/or the executive branch writing its own law. This is not very compatible with democracy.

<comment><USER73> While I understand your definition, this is not what Wikipedia nor what Merriam-Webster use for it.

The separation of powers in three branches is not strictly necessary for a democracy, just a mechanism through witch it is attained. Surely, there could be examples where the powers are slpit another way that could still qualify as democracies.

If, somehow, the will of the people were to accept spying as a cornerstone of their society, trading privacy for safety, would it still be a democracy?

Anyways, sorry, for nitpitcking, but something just sounds... incomplete in your answer.

<comment><USER74> You're not really nitpicking, the parent comment has stretched democracy somewhat to encompass a lot of what I assume they associate with a good government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> This guy did this to the US gov but would never do it to China or Russia. They are not on the safe safe playing field.

</comment><comment><USER76> Would have been nice to have Snowden actually there in person if he were not such a coward.

<comment><USER77> Is a man who chooses not to walk into a pointed knife a coward?

<comment><USER76> Reality winner is only serving 5 years and she showed good faith. Ellsberg won in court and served 0 years. If Snowden weren't a coward he could be there in person right now.

<comment><USER78> "With that being said, leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are!" \- POTUS

Obviously this doesn't apply directly to Snowden.

I would be worried about a fair trial in this type of political climate as well.

I mean, it's not the US has ever inappropriately applied the judiciary to falsely imprison a man before!

<comment><USER79> The act of fleeing made it harder for himself. Had he not fled overseas and really did attempt to follow proper whisleblower procedure he would most likely be a free man today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> The whistleblower protections that Snowden did not bother to use are the same ones currently providing the spark for the impeachment proceedings in the US House of Representatives.

Really wish he had gone that route instead of the one he chose - and we'll never know for sure how pure his intentions were/are because of it.

<comment><USER81> I often find myself scrolling to the bottom of these snowden threads just to see how often people downvote/flag opinions they don't agree with.

HN doesn't seem to be much better than reddit in this regard

<comment><USER80> I couldn't agree more.

This issue is super duper clear but nobody seems to "get" it.

Too enamored with the idea of a folk hero to consider the fallout from a long view perspective.

<comment><USER79> Well said.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Should 16-Year-Olds Get to Vote? Absolutely - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-08/letting-16-year-olds-vote-is-a-good-idea <comment><USER2> IMO you should be allowed to vote 5yr after whatever age all the other "adult things" kick in.

I don't want people who don't know what the reality they have to live in for the overwhelming majority of their lives is like trying to make decisions about who gets to control it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe voting requires far more responsibility and is much more dangerous than say, owning a firearm. So the voting age should be at least the age that your state lawmakers think is reasonable for owning a firearm. IMO.

</comment><comment><USER4> So many issues here and too many laws around the age of 18. Do these kids even have an ID? Do we change age for Military? Insurance? Driving?

This country is still putting people in jail for weed, now they want kids to vote? No thanks....</comment>


Hashboard – Job hunting now made super easy ;) - <AUTHOR> http://producthunt.com/posts/hashboard-3 <comment><USER2> Why is job search such a hot topic with start-ups these days? Maybe I'm just not creative, but I don't see what urgent need should be there.

In general you just need a blackboard with contact data and short descriptions. Improvements are not needing to send your CV because the employers can just see it in your profile (feature is already there, at least in some). then searching, filtering and notifications are nice, so that you don't have to manually scan all offers. We also have that. Actual job matching is not possible, because descriptions aren't that detailed, CVs aren't that detailed and both job and applicant change in the timeframe of a usual hire too much. But we also have that, manual through head hunters and probably also automatic.

So, I can't find an urgent need. The market is more than full with job boards. And actually even big companies don't like to pay for these services if it's not about a key position.</comment>


Ask HN: Security vulnerability discovered during interview - <AUTHOR> I was recently on an interview where the team pair programs on real code as the "engineering challenge."
During the interview we were working on a feature and I noticed what appeared to be a session fixation vulnerability where - and I kid you not - the session ID is the user's email.
The product allows you to upload/download files to the user's account.
I pointed it out to the engineer and the response was that it "was fine" because _they_ only cared about certain files and if other stuff ended up there it didn't matter. I pointed out you'd be able to also _read_ any files (which are sensitive reports) and was told "you'd have to know the file name to download them."
The file names are trivial to guess given you are familiar with the site.
While this isn't a feature that could be exploited to take over a host, it could allow free file hosting, huge costs (if one kept uploading large files), and a potential data breach of sensitive customer information.
I am _not_ a security research or a colored hat wearer of any sort.
What would you do in this scenario? <comment><USER2> No matter how your interview experience is, keep it professional and drop them an email via an official channel, if possible include also interested parties informing them "Hey during the interview we faced issue X and I raised my concerns but it was bugging me, so to make sure I am dropping you an email with the below details, since double check better than to be sorry". Maybe recruiter was in hurry during interview and didnt give enough attention or maybe another candidate heard the vulnerability or the worst case scenario in future someone in luck found same weakness but used to damage company, instead of bothering yourself, let them deal with it.</comment>


Ask HN: Shared DevOps for OSS. What would it look like? - <AUTHOR> A friend and I were arguing whether a "shared devops platform" servicing OSS projects, would be helpful! Many OSS communities I've interacted with, have very little time and resources. Setting up your typical servers (CI/CD, irc, mailing-list, web servers, DBs...etc) just eats a lot of time, let alone baby sitting all this software (security patching, backups...). Yet, almost every OSS project has to do almost all of that.<p>So HN, do you think a standardized devops platform where any OSS project can get managed standard software stacks helps OSS projects thrive faster? What would that platform look like ? <comment><USER2> > [...] a "shared devops platform" servicing OSS projects, would be helpful! > [...] (CI/CD, irc, mailing-list, web servers, DBs...etc)

These have nothing to do with "devops", however you would define it. Please don't overload already vague term with your own invented meaning.

> Setting up your typical servers (CI/CD, irc, mailing-list, web servers, > DBs...etc) just eats a lot of time [...] Yet, almost every OSS project has > to do almost all of that.

No, they don't have to do virtually any of that (barring a trivial web server).

There's very little projects that would really use continuous integration system. Just having tests that are easy to run is typically more than enough.

You don't really want to keep your own IRC server. Use Freenode, people hang out there already to talk about open source projects.

Web server usually just needs to host some static files, which is trivial, and if it needs to host custom application (e.g. demo of the project), it needs custom work anyway. Where is database for static files, I have no idea.

The only really cumbersome thing is hosting a mailing list, but for smaller projects a dedicated mailing list isn't that useful, and larger projects should want to keep control over this service anyway.</comment>


Ask HN: Did Orwell in 1984 correctly predict coming of the Big Brother? - <AUTHOR> I am reading Orwell's 1984 currently and had a thought. Given the prevailing ubiquitous surveillance in modern countries do you think era of the Big Brother is here? And for even more dystopian view of the world, combine that with the findings from the Stanford Prison Experiment? Just a thought... <comment><USER2> People tend not to stand for 1984 draconian style of thought control but Brave new world seems more apt to me.

<comment><USER3> In 1984 the draconian thought control was only for party members. The proles went about their lives mostly unaware, and made up most of the population.</comment></comment>


University of Chicago Drops SAT, ACT Requirement for Admissions - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/university-of-chicago-drops-sat-act-requirement-for-admissions-1529009194 <comment><AUTHOR> I don't like this change. Research has found that a combination of high school GPA and SAT or ACT scores is the best predictor of college grades and graduation rates. The SAT and ACT offer fee waivers for low-income students, so requiring them is not unfair.

<comment><USER2> "Best predictor" eliminates the edge cases. That's not optimal when we are talking about humans in a social environment.

We need less worship of numbers and statistics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even if you think admissions should not be made based on a composite of grades and test scores, you should still be looking at them alongside more subjective measures. You are not doing someone a favor by admitting them if they have a high chance of flunking out.</comment></comment></comment>


Mac OS X Notes App Open Source Clone for Linux and Windows - <AUTHOR> http://www.get-notes.com/ <comment><USER2> Currently using Google Keep.</comment>


Machine Learning – Based Personality Analysis of a Failed Finance Minister - <AUTHOR> https://tselai.com/machine-learning-baroufakis.html <comment><USER2> Every politician should have his/her talks parsed with this technique.

<comment><USER3> That will just begin a process of wealthy politicians hiring companies to game their speeches..</comment></comment>


1Password and the Case of the XARA Bandit - <AUTHOR> https://blog.agilebits.com/2015/10/15/1password-and-the-case-of-the-xara-bandit/ <comment><USER2> Link is broken for me. Two seemingly related blog entries from Agile Bits:

Discussion of the vulnerability — [https://blog.agilebits.com/2015/06/17/1password-inter- proces...](https://blog.agilebits.com/2015/06/17/1password-inter-process- communication-discussion/)

Version of 1Password with increased security: [https://blog.agilebits.com/2015/10/15/1password-5-4-for- mac-...](https://blog.agilebits.com/2015/10/15/1password-5-4-for-mac-the- convenience-edition/)</comment>


Must startup founders be charismatic? - <AUTHOR> http://tomtunguz.com/must-startup-founders-be-charismatic <comment><USER2> In Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about how he was surprised to discover the opposite of the typical, gregarious CEO. He found that CEOs building great companies that last were quiet, modest, and humble and attributed company success to others rather than drawing attention to him/herself.

A model for that for me is Tony Hsieh. He's a quiet, thoughtful guy, and he's always talking about luck and attributing Zappos's success to the company's values, not his own genius.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't trust _Good to Great_. Almost all the predictions it made turned out to be wrong. Contrast this to _The Innovator's Dilemma_ , where most of the predictions the author made turned out to be correct.

More detail from the Wikipedia Article[1]: "Steven D. Levitt describes how he was inspired to read the book by the "phenomenon" it had become, and noted that many of the companies selected as "great" had since got into serious troubles, such as Circuit City, while only Nucor had "dramatically outperformed the stock market" and "Abbott Labs and Wells Fargo have done okay". Overall, investing in the portfolio of those 11 companies in 2001 would result in actually underperforming the S&P 500[4] Levitt concluded that books like this are "mostly backward-looking" and can't offer a guide for the future.[5]"

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_to_great>

<comment><USER4> I brought up Good to Great on HN once (re: this exact topic) and got a similar reply. Just because it failed to accurately predict the future doesn't mean there isn't any valuable information in there. It's certainly not on my top 10 list of best books ever, but it's not on my list of books I wish I'd never read either.

It suggests that some of the best run companies are run by non-charismatic CEOs--I agree with that. Read it and make up your own mind. Or don't, but come off the whole "That book will poison your mind" thing.

<comment><USER5> To verify (I have not read the book, and am honestly asking so I can figure out whether I should, based on these comments bringing it up): does the book then have reasons to believe the things it says other than "these are successful companies [apparently false] so let's see how they are run"?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


One wolf's migration across Europe - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/science/animal-magic/2014/aug/08/slavc-wolf-migration-europe <comment><USER2> This reminds me of an anecdote from a local (European) telco:

A customer called the customer support line because their monthly invoice was way higher than in the previous months. They had 3G data access modems/SIMs and a fairly standard contract. The CSR searched their record and found that they had a lot of roaming data fees (really expensive if you don't have a special contract). The customer then replied "I see. Well, we use these data SIMs in special collars to monitor some bears... One of them went abroad."

<comment><USER3> There's an advertisement in here waiting to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would like to know how they kept the battery alive for over a year with all that power-hungry stuff in there...

<comment><USER5> The collar sends its location every 3 hours = 7 times per day = 2555 times over a year, for a couple of seconds each time. If on average each wake up lasts 5 seconds, that's only 3.5 hours over the year, so definitely within the range of commercial batteries.

<comment><USER6> 5 seconds is fast to acquire a GPS fix...

<comment><USER2> With a cold start - yes. But most GPS chips have memory backup for short-term almanac data (valid for up to 4 hours, works if the GPS doesn't move long distances in that time period) and internal clocks, so it can perform a warm start. This takes only a few micro Amps standby current, so it's not hard on the battery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We've seen similar migratory behavior from wolves in the USA. Here's an Oregon wolf that has gone over 1000 miles: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OR-7](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OR-7)

<comment><USER8> It's a different species, cougars, but this is an interesting story of one that was killed by a car in Connecticut, and which was identified as having come from South Dakota, 1,800 miles away.

[http://griffinsguide.com/content/2014/01/06/cougar-makes- an-...](http://griffinsguide.com/content/2014/01/06/cougar-makes-an- incredible-journey/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems Slavc was the only one of its kind from these scientists that survived the long migration.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is SMS usually the way you send data from tracking devices?

<comment><USER11> I tracked down the manufacturer in another comment. Their devices can communicate with UHF/VHF radios, GSM and a couple of different satellite systems, Globalstar and Iridium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wolfs community is very concerned about this. There is initiative from senior members to held conference about fighting for wolfs right to privacy.</comment>


Why I Won't Make It Past Your Careers Page - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/shenomads/why-i-wont-make-it-past-your-careers-page-e7408a67f813#.lmda9f2n1 <comment><USER2> Contrary to the author, I'd rather not have the picture on the careers page show a majority of people of colors and women. That's a strong indicator of a random stock photo, totally unrelated to the company.

Now about putting beer and table pong first in the list of perks. That does say something about the culture.

<comment><USER3> Where did the author express a desire for a picture with a majority of people of color and women? Because I didn't get that at all.

The closest I found was her desire to see there is another woman of color so that she isn't the first.</comment></comment>


Do Giraffes Float? - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2010/06/giraffe_flotation_dynamics.php

<comment><USER2> I couldn't find an explanation of why one can't just put a real giraffe in a tank, fill it with water and "see what happens". (Obviously I suggest doing this in such a way that one can quickly rescue the giraffe in case it's not buoyant after all.)

It makes complete sense to me that most land mammals have at least rudimentary swimming capabilities, because it's probably selected for. Not very often, of course, but whenever there's a flood, all non-swimming animals in a region die at once, which is a lot of selection pressure.

<comment><USER3> I guess the trouble and expense outweighs the curiosity. In particular, I bet the intersection of people who have a spare giraffe and people who don't mind an ASPCA/PETA protest is very small.

Another example of an easily testable issue: Do people swim faster or slower in a more viscous fluid? Newton and Huygens, among others, argued back and forth over this, but no one bothered setting up an experiment until 2004. The paper went on to win an Ig Nobel Prize. (Answer: Viscosity doesn't seem to affect a person's swimming speed.)

[http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040920/full/news040920-2.htm...](http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040920/full/news040920-2.html)

<comment><USER4> Along the same lines, the Mythbusters had an episode about swimming in syrup. Here's a link to the first part of the episode: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs4Q5jZSJbA>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found this image with the different patters and distributions of the giraffe populations more interesting than the main question of the article.

[http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/Brown-et- al-2007_Gir...](http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/Brown-et- al-2007_Giraffa_phylogeography_June-2010.jpg)

I had always thought of all giraffes as having the same pattern.

</comment><comment><USER6> A silly (& interesting) question, but good science journalism. What a difference it makes when the author actually knows and cares!

Is it just me, or are a lot of the animations and diagrams on Discovery channel just brain-dead? Very often, the geometry is wrong, or there are lots of places where the animator reveals subtle cluelessness. Contrast this to the diagrams in this article. The pictures themselves can spur "ah ha!" moments because they are based on real dynamics.

(Horses and dogs seem to exert effort to keep their heads above water. Here's why!)

</comment><comment><USER7> Somebody told me when I was 17 that he was so smart he could "teach baby chickens to swim"

I spent 20 years wondering about chickens and their swimming ability, finally giving up. Why did I wonder so much? Because it was unsolved, it was a simple question, and everybody had a different opinion about the matter. You'd think that something that simple would be obvious. As Kahn said about a different thing _He tasks me! He tasks me, and I shall have him! I'll chase him round the Moons of Nibia, and round the Antares Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up!_

It is uniquely annoying.

During that process, however, which included blogging, diagramming various chicken breeds, and questions posed to experts, people told me that giraffes also could not swim. "You take a giraffe, drop him out of a helicopter over the ocean, and he'll drown"

I find this hard to believe, and without access to a helicopter or a giraffe, cannot say for sure. But scanning the article, I get to the end:

 _Unfortunately, we don't really know enough to be sure whether these distributional limits actually have anything to do with the ability or inability of giraffes to cross water._

I may get hit by a truck tomorrow, but at least I know that the computational fluid dynamics of giraffes, and perhaps chickens, will continue to be studied. One day, my friends, we will know the answer. :)

EDIT: Blog entry from five years ago this month: [http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2005/06/can_chickens_...](http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2005/06/can_chickens_sw.php)

<comment><USER8> Wait, what? Twenty years of wondering and controversy and you didn't even test it? It seems to me that you are rather interested in a good argument than a good answer :)

If I were to test this I would look at two things:

1\. Can you teach chickens anything at all? (You want to explore the teachability of chickens first – if chickens drown in the second step and you find out that you can't actually teach chickens anything meaningful you can already be pretty confident that teaching chickens to swim is impossible.)

2\. How do "default" chickens behave when thrown into water?

2b. (If chickens drown when thrown into water:) How would you have to change their behavior if you wanted them to keep afloat? Is such a change within the scope of chickens' teachability?

Seems like perfectly reasonable, straightforward testing to me. Something the Mythbusters could (should, actually!) do.

<comment><USER9> I don't have a spare chicken, so I'm not totally sure, but I think chickens would float quite well. And their default flap wings to run faster behavior would also do pretty well to get them moving in water.

<comment><USER7> I have literally typed 4 replies to ugh, deleting them before I posted them and then coming back to this page.

I refuse to start this again. 20 years! I will say that there are a lot of problems here, including type of chicken, time of year, and whether the chicken is in fear of it's life or if it knows you're just playing around. I think you'd have the same problem with giraffes.

EDIT: It's also in the feathers. Chickens aren't ducks, so their feathers are made differently. Proponents of non-swimming chickens point to the lack of webbed feet, quality of the feathers, and absence of any aquatic chicken relatives.

<comment><USER9> Shall I test it for you next time I have a spare chicken? :)

Edit: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56av1QuM8MM>

There you go. Your 20 years of suffering are over. Chickens float, and swim.

<comment><USER8> You should, of course, rescue the chicken if it can't swim. That's not as wasteful and you can test different methods of getting the chicken into water.

– edit: More floating than swimming. Now you start having the really stupid arguments: Is putting a chicken into water and letting it just float there the same as teaching a chicken how to swim? Ah, semantics. Bane of humanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My 6 year old daughter kept asking if giraffe can swim, which I could not really answer or find answers to it. Now I got a logic answer, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER11> Isn't the real question what is the probability of a giraffe swimming?

</comment><comment><USER12> Only if they are not witch giraffes.

<comment><USER6> Now we have a data point for Monty Python appreciation on HN.

 _Really small_ ones would float.

NITPICK: They'd just skitter on the surface tension.</comment></comment>


Richard Stallman Has Announced the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines - <AUTHOR> https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html <comment><USER2> There was a bunch of discussion already in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18274663](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18274663).

</comment><comment><USER3> <pre> Rather than trying to have the last word, look for the times when there is no need to reply, perhaps because you already made the relevant point clear enough. If you know something about the game of Go, this analogy might clarify that: when the opponent's move is not strong enough to require a direct response, it is advantageous to give it none and instead move elsewhere. </pre>

I had to deal with someone who thought that having the last word is "a thing". So, he will never give up on any discussion without adding a last reply. It is hard to deal with such people.

On the game of go, can someone illustrate how it is advantageous to not have the last word?

Also, I am not sure if this example will convince a last-word-wrong-doer, they are in for an emotional satisfaction, not a rational one.

<comment><USER4> Offtopic but it struck me as strange that the author would choose to use Go for this example instead of chess, which would be much more familiar to people. Almost like a subtle form of intellectual "flexing".

<comment><USER5> The allegory doesn't work for Chess since you almost always need to meet advances with responses. Go is different and more strategic in that respect, because you don't need to win every skirmish.

<comment><USER6> That is also true for chess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's nicely balanced and well thought through in my opinion.

I'm particularly impressed by the second last para talking about the Gnu organisation's only two political positions or points, and says: "We don't require you as a contributor to agree with these two points, but you do need to accept that our decisions will be based on them."

<comment><USER3> I agree it is making their stance clear on their policies and standing ground on what they believe in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the first effects of this is another attempt to remove RMS's pet favourite abortion joke from the glibc docs: [https://lwn.net/Articles/753646/](https://lwn.net/Articles/753646/) -> [https://sourceware.org/ml/libc- alpha/2018-10/msg00399.html](https://sourceware.org/ml/libc- alpha/2018-10/msg00399.html)

Will RMS comply with his own "guidelines"?

<comment><USER9> Apparently not: [https://sourceware.org/ml/libc- alpha/2018-10/msg00467.html](https://sourceware.org/ml/libc- alpha/2018-10/msg00467.html)

> More precisely, the guidelines are about how we communicate in our > discussions, not what ideas we communicate (as long as they are pertinent to > the topic of the list and support the goal of the project).

> These guidelines as such do not apply to manuals. Kindness as a general > principle surely does apply to manuals, but precisely how remains to be > decided.

> I just installed a statement in the GNU maintainer guide saying that humor > is welcome _in general_ -- that we reject the idea of "professionalism" > which calls for deleting humor because it is humor.

> That doesn't decide the question of the abort(3) joke. There are issues to > decide before that.

<comment><USER10> I wish rms had the humility to accept that his joke is not funny and is making more people unhappy than it's making people laugh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The highest discriminatory factor I see in the tech community is the English language. You either have to invest a lot of energy to master it or you are left with local niche communities.

Of course that is difficult to tackle, but it can serve as a benchmark. You can offer a french speaker to be addressed with the wrong pronoun in french or the correct one in English. How would the majority decide?

<comment><USER12> It might be the first time in the history of Human Civilization that we have the opportunity to standardize the communication pipeline on a global scale. English is not perfect, but it's the standard we have. It's like coding conventions, the exact choice doesn't really matter, consistency is the important trait.

I wish we could forget about where the language is coming from and focus on where we are going. Do we want a future where everyone can understand each other? I do. I don't want some great ideas to be hidden for centuries because their author happened to speak a language no one bothered translating from.

Let's standardize on English, teach it everywhere to every child, call it a solved problem and move on.

(disclaimer: I am a French native speaker living in France).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This seems like a fairly incremental tweak to normal professional protocols; I think it's one of the better guidelines I've seen.

I still disagree with framing this as "kindness" though, simply because courtesy is a habit you practice for those times when you're _not_ feeling kind. On good days, I may litter my speech with "thank yous" and such that might be unnecessary given my demeanor, but on bad days it pays off as the behavior is automatic.

Much of the document is about deescalation which really is an art if you've ever tried to break up a fight. That they bring up the Go analogy is good, because if you're working on project you're not just responding to respond, but because you're trying to represent your interests; lobbying in a word.

</comment><comment><USER14> The article as a whole is well-worded, and surprisingly neutral given what's been going on in the community lately, that's why it boggles mind why you'd write something like "This discouragement particularly affects members of disprivileged demographics (...)". All this is going to do is upset people.

</comment><comment><USER15> The best way to avoid conflict and encourage diversity is to force everyone to voluntarily think alike.

<comment><USER16> Odd, but correct. It's a heterological issue, where maximal (not total) diversity is achieved by getting everyone to agree on the value of respecting each other's choices as long as no harm is done.

For an example in the political realm, see Popper's Paradox of Tolerance: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance), aka, why we shouldn't tolerate neo-nazis, white supremacists, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I know this has been litigated into the ground by now, but I'm just struck by the pettiness in GNU continuing to insist that:

> There are various ways to express gender neutrality in third-person singular > pronouns in English; you do not have to use "they."

This feels like a vanishingly small hill to die on, given the ideals that are at stake in the GNU project. It certainly feels very out-of-place on a high- level code of conduct such as this one.

EDIT: to clarify, I'm referring specifically to the insistence that "they" is an invalid singular pronoun. I'm being maximally charitable when I say that I'm not sure why RMS's personal views on what constitute "correct" pronouns merits mention on an organization's code of conduct.

<comment><USER18> Stallman's still upset that people use singular "they". It's bad grammar, or something. [https://stallman.org/articles/genderless- pronouns.html](https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html)

I go by "they" on a day-to-day basis and generally I don't have any issues with it; it's fairly obvious when someone's referring to me singularly, and people will sometimes use my name a little more often if it's ambiguous.

It's not a big deal except when people elect to make it a big deal; I've had Stallman's blogpost thrown at me on IRC a few times by people who also like dying on the vanishingly small hill that is "People who don't identify with any gender in particular shouldn't be able to use the existing non-gendered pronoun because it's BAD GRAMMAR and that INFRINGES ON MY RIGHTS or some shit"

Tom Scott put it well in an older video of his; "Some people are "They", get over it!"

<comment><USER19> I'm entirely sympathetic with his preference for precision when at all possible. One of my great pet peeves in modern usage of language is the lack of precision of usage, which I think leads to a lack of precision of thought and communications that creates bad feeling and wastes time unnecessarily. When people are lazy about using words correctly they can also become more generic over time in general, which in turn robs other people of the ability to get their thoughts across as well down the road.

However while I think his examples of where "they" can lead to ambiguity are fair, his argument that "we have a clean, clear and natural solution" is not supported by his own examples. Take the first one for they:

> _" When my child was removed and placed with Dad, they internalized it and > took it like they did something wrong."_

Let's try his "natural" answer:

> _" When my child was removed and placed with Dad, person internalized it and > took it like pers did something wrong."_

What. That's awful. Certainly no better then "ze internalized it" or any other entirely made up word. "Per" and "pers" and "perse" are not "equivalent and interchangeable" with person in normal English at all, and in fact "per" is already in usage as a preposition. He does this whole setup but then his solution falls hilariously flat, and in fact illustrates precisely why people use "they".

If people just want to bite the bullet and try to push a universal gender neutral singular pronoun like "ze" or "zhe" or whatever for English I don't have any problem with that. I think it also might be practical to achieve, it's just "the singular of they" so plural doesn't change and nobody ever needs to think about it again. It has the advantage of laziness, everyone can just start using it everywhere and never have to think about it again. I don't think it can really be pretended that anything existing can just slot in there though, certainly not what RMS came up with.

<comment><USER20> > One of my great pet peeves in modern usage of language is the lack of > precision of usage

What makes you think this is a modern thing?

<comment><USER21> Everything bad is modern. Things used to be so much better back in the before times.

<comment><USER20> Make English Great Again</s></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thoughts on Working Remotely - <AUTHOR> http://davidwalsh.name/thoughts-working-remotely

<comment><USER2> I work from home, and much of this rings true. I would like to see a similar article from an employer's perspective, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's one perspective on working remotely: When the bandwidth is limited, you make it count. [1]

So much office B.S. gets weeded out, when the requestor has to make sure to get their point across in a single email.

\--

[1] Although it's considerably less limited -- or at least, technologically less limited -- than it used to be.</comment>


Top 6 Ecommerce Pages to A/B Test by Win Rate - <AUTHOR> https://www.experimentengine.com/blog/top-6-ecommerce-pages-to-ab-test-win-rate/

<comment><AUTHOR> If anyone has questions or comments, I'll be around to answer and discuss! Would love feedback as well!</comment>


Bertha back on the move after 2 years of delays - <AUTHOR> http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/bertha-restarts-after-two-years-of-delays/ <comment><USER2> This is essentially Seattle's version of Boston's Big Dig.

There are zero guarantees that this won't happen again, no one is willing to say who's on the hook for cost overruns, and there's still no plan about what to do if the viaduct happens to collapse while they're working on the tunnel.

Fwiw, I voted against this project, and I will be amazed if it is finished.

<comment><USER3> For someone not well-versed with the alternatives, could you summarize them?

<comment><USER2> Downtown Seattle features an elevated section of highway, known as the Alaskan Way Viaduct. It dates back to the 1950s, and was heavily damaged during the 2001 Nisqually earthquake. There's no question that it's seismically unsound, and our state DoT put out this simulation a few years back to demonstrate what the next big quake is likely to do to it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hos_uIKwC-c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hos_uIKwC-c)

So, a few options were proposed to replace it:

1\. Surface highway

2\. Cut and cover tunnel

3\. Deep bore tunnel

A surface highway is, by far, the simplest option to implement: you knock down the viaduct, and repave the area underneath it (there's already a road under the viaduct—it just needs expansion).

The viaduct is a death trap, and it will kill some or all of the people on it when it comes down. There is absolutely no question about that in my mind whatsoever. For that reason, I absolutely refuse to set foot on it. There's going to be political hell to pay when it collapses and Seattleites are re- reminded that there was no reason why anyone had to die on a highway everyone knew was unsafe.

<comment><USER4> The area beneath the viaduct would make a horrible freeway. It is, and should be turned into a park with limited vehicle access. There is to much foot traffic in that area. There are better ways to redirect traffic around downtown Seattle without going directly beneath the viaduct

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One key point, the original completion date was dec 2015, as of today the drilled about 10% and had had several breakdowns.

</comment><comment><USER5> The biggest issue I have with this project isn't the chosen plan -- it's that Seattle waited 20+ years to take action. The 2001 Nisqually quake certainly damaged the 99 bridge, but it was already in a state of constant repair prior to that point. Before then, initiative after initiative was put on the ballot as Seattleites would constantly register their preferences for how to deal with the 99/waterfront area.

There have been lots of politics involved over those 20+ years, and if Seattle is really _bad_ at something, it's politics. The project, as poorly planned and estimated as it has been, is actually better than the historic alternative -- doing nothing at all.

<comment><USER6> There's a difference between Seattle and Olympia.</comment></comment>


Show HN: WebAssembly System Interface for Deno has been merged into Deno - <AUTHOR> https://deno.land/std/wasi/README.md <comment><AUTHOR> So this is somewhat of a followup to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23548491](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23548491) which was about deno-wasi, an implementation of the WebAssembly System Interface for Deno.

Well, I merged deno-wasi into deno about week or two ago, currently shipping in stable.

Please feel free to break it :)

</comment><comment><USER2> Not familliar with WebAssembly. Does this mean Deno is talking to code written in other languages that are compiled to WebAssemlby?

<comment><USER3> In a Javascript ecosystem, WebAssembly and WASI can play a similar role as native DLLs in Python (or also the role native DLLs are playing in the NPM ecosystem). You can load WASM modules from Javascript code, and those WASM modules can interact with the underlying system via WASI.

This enables some new scenarios:

\- You want to use an existing library, but this library isn't available in Javascript. Instead of porting the library source code over to JS, compile it to WASM and call into the WASM module from Javascript.

\- You've optimized some piece of JS code, but hit a performance or readability wall (often, JS code optimized for performance is much less readable than "idiomatic" JS). You can port the code to C and compile to WASM instead, this might push the wall a little bit further (not as far away as native code would allow, but often quite close).

The main advantage of WASM+WASI over native DLLs is that they are OS and CPU independent. You don't need a DLL built for each possible OS+CPU combination, instead just compile once to a WASM module.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Tina, a CMS Builder for React Websites - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tinacms/tinacms <comment><USER2> Checkout the 9-min announcement at JAMstack conf if you want to see it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPDCmbaEF0Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPDCmbaEF0Y)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know why many people repeat a bad idea again and again

Why all want to build such a CMS which is old-fashioned (Wordpress-style)

Please check Bubble.io and if you find its atomic design approach awesome come back to me if you want to build the next Unicorn startup

<comment><USER4> Tina and Bubble.io have no overlap in terms of intended market. And Tina isn't even remotely 'Wordpress-style'. The idea is that you -- a developer -- already have a beautifully coded, optimized website/webapp. All you want to do is provide an interface so non-devs can edit content, and that's what Tina provides. It's an open source toolkit for providing an editing UI. It's not a CMS or 'walled garden' tool that you build your site/app inside, nor is it yet another wordpress clone.</comment></comment>