El Salvador bans metal mining in world first - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2017-04-el-salvador-metal-world.html <comment><USER2> This has apparently been in the works for a while[0] in response to a ridiculous percentage of El Salvador's fresh water being poisoned by mining runoff. Good for them, this looks like it solves a lot of problems.

Does anyone know what sort of impact this will have on their economy?

[0][https://www.theguardian.com/global- development/2017/mar/30/e...](https://www.theguardian.com/global- development/2017/mar/30/el-salvador-makes-history-first-nation-to-impose- blanket-ban-on-metal-mining)

<comment><USER3> > Does anyone know what sort of impact this will have on their economy?

Pretty much zero. I live in El Salvador. The economy is fucked up since long time ago, and metal mining was unlikely to help in any way, specially when most of the profit derived from it was going to leave the country, and the percentage that would remain here was going to end up in the hands of corrupt government officials, in the form of bribes or funding for lobbying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At first glance, I think this measure makes a lot of sense - profits from mines mostly leave the country.

That being said, I'd expect this will lead to a surge in illegal mining operations, which will likely be a lot more environmentally hazardous.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand why you'd be downvoted, this is feasible: see the illegal sand mining operations in India for instance [0].

[0]: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/magazine/sand-mining- indi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/magazine/sand-mining-india-how-to- steal-a-river.html)

<comment><USER6> Some people might see it as sort of a defeatist stance to take. Is it harder to detect illegal mine or to regulate all mining? Seems they would be easy to find from satallite images.

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't a stance be to use the argument above to support a set of (in)actions?

The argument by itself is not moot, and the writer did not explicitly support an agenda.

<comment><USER6> It implies (correctly) that the legislation will lead to more problems.

That the comment doesn't suggest action is the form of defeatism I was refering to. Defeatists don't normally call for inaction they just present all the problems that action leads to promote inaction.

<comment><USER5> I understand what you mean, but I think you're putting more meaning to it than it has.

> _Defeatists don 't normally call for inaction they just present all the > problems that action leads to promote inaction._

Suppose someone called for prohibition again as an action to reduce the incidence of alcohol-related car accidents and domestic abuse.

You have the information that this leads to a lot of money flowing into the hands of criminals. How is stating that defeatism?

<comment><USER6> Not really fair to compare common social activity to industrial pollution. The context of the comment is why it is defeatist, we're in a world with cheaper sensors than ever. Environmental pollution regulation enforcement is therefore cheaper than ever. Stating that "people will just illegally mine which will pollute more" makes it seem like legislation paradoxically leads to more pollution, when regulating this behavior is an easier problem to solve than ever.

<comment><USER5> I can't agree that if you can detect illegal activity you invariably _will_ act against it efficiently, one of the examples from the top of my head is the Amazon Deforestation.

You're conflating a simple statement that presents factual information to a mindset.

One in fact can use that information to try influencing people to _be scared™_. However that is not always the case, and people can for example offer an alternative.

The case in point is not that I agree or not with the passing of the law, but that passing it may have unintended consequences, so that you need to account for that.

The analogy was intended to be used as a context for a debate against decision makers using factual data, the fact that it's mining or liquor does not make difference. It was devised to counter-attack your understanding that just by warning of something bad if you do something else you're being defeatist.

> _Some people might see it as sort of a defeatist stance to take. Is it > harder to detect illegal mine or to regulate all mining?_

Since you're assuming something implicit in our discussion maybe you can answer the question yourself.

<comment><USER6> Op didnt state a fact, he made a somewhat cynical prediction, based on his belief that restriction of pollution generating activity leads to more pollution. Its only true if no one enforces the law, which can be easily done in this case. That is as clearly as i can explain why that seemed defeatist imho which I thought explained the downvotes.

I'm not trying to make implicit assumptions, that question was rhetorical and answered in the next sentence.

<comment><USER5> > _I 'm not trying to make implicit assumptions, that question was rhetorical > and answered in the next sentence. _

Ok, so I'll guess you are assuming it is easy to detect and punish irregular mining then.

I agree and understand your point as how the increased propensity for illegal mining can be combated.

I think it was not exactly cynical, and that's coming from someone who supports El Salvador's action. We need clarification of all possible issues to understand how to act on them, but I guess at this point it's a difference on how each one of us took the statement.

That was a good discussion though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ages ago, a buddy predicted we'd eventually just mine our own trash for precious metals. As opposed to recycling, I suppose. Call it "extreme recycling".

I wonder how close we are to that future.

<comment><USER8> It's a reality. The nickel smelting operation in Norilsk, Russia is so polluting that you can mine the topsoil downwind of the smelter feasibly: [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/world/europe/12norilsk.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/world/europe/12norilsk.html?ref=world)

<comment><USER9> That is awesomely terrifying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How dare El Salvador try to use facts to claim that these foreign companies mining their resources don't help their communities but only pollute it!

The anarcho capitalist solution is that the country should privatize their water supply so that outside companies can then legally buy up the lakes and pollute as much as they want! After all the companies will have paid people for it - the people only would have to live there :)

<comment><USER11> > The anarcho capitalist solution is that the country should privatize their > water supply so that outside companies can then legally buy up the lakes and > pollute as much as they want!

That's roughly what has been happening in several other Latin American countries. Bechtel being the usual suspect, they specialize at that kind of trick hand-in-hand with the World Bank.

<comment><USER12> My father worked as a chemical process engineer for Bechtel stationed in a 3rd world country (we all lived there with him too) working on the public-works water treatment system for the nation's capital - from what I can tell, Bechtel did go in with honest intentions - but were stalled by local corruption and lack of political willpower.

<comment><USER11> How about Bolivia?

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

"The World Bank said that "poor governments are often too plagued by local corruption and too ill equipped to, the World Bank stated that "no subsidies should be given to ameliorate the increase in water tariffs in Cochabamba". The New Yorker reported on the World Bank's motives, "Most of the poorest neighborhoods were not hooked up to the network, so state subsidies to the water utility went mainly to industries and middle-class neighborhoods; the poor paid far more for water of dubious purity from trucks and handcarts. In the World Bank's view, it was a city that was crying out for water privatization."

That sounds eerily like your comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In _Collapse_, Jared Diamond makes the argument that almost all modern mining of metals would be economically unprofitable if all the negative externalities (i.e., cleanup costs) were taken into account.

<comment><USER14> I assume there's nuance to that you left out. Metal demand is inelastic. Prices would go up, demand would go down, but there would still be demand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I suspect their head of state will die in a plane crash within a year. Either that or there will be a military coupe. Double your bets if any of those shut down were American mining companies.

And before you start saying I should take off my tin foil hat, look up the 1973 coupe in Chile, the Iranian Contras, United Fruit and the documentary Confessions of an Economic Hitman.

I hope El Salvador keeps mining banned. I really do. But the track record is that NATO countries tend to "fix" things when their interests are threatened.

<comment><USER16> The history is accurate and maybe that would've happened 20 years ago. But I wonder if globalization + the internet have ended these secret coups. I really can't imagine a world in which the CIA overthrows an entire government without anyone leaking it or noticing.

I guess it's possible that the U.S. doesn't care about the backlash, but it wouldn't be a popular move.

<comment><USER17> I dont think so. See: Color revolutions and Arab spring.

<comment><USER18> What are you trying to imply? That those were CIA projects?

<comment><USER19> Even if they didn't devised it, they are definitely sponsoring Syrian rebels. Also if Putin/Russia, China grow strong enough to challenge US, things will deteriorate fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is interesting.

Blocking access to a resource would redirect efforts towards other activities.

Countries with abundance of resources or no restrictions to harvest them are not always more prosperous, as explained by the concept "resource course": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse)

</comment><comment><USER21> The problem here is that our technological society needs metals to operate. But getting those metals is making a big mess in less-developed places like this, for the benefit of the more-developed places.

So, the solution is simple: mine asteroids. No one cares about pollution in space.

</comment><comment><USER22> It'll be interesting to see how fast banning the pollution results in water quality changes.

<comment><USER11> Or how fast massive sudden un-employment results in riots. Fast change like this is bound to have side-effects.

> But mining accounts for a minimal portion of their economies and jobs, a > recent study by various NGOs showed.

Which of course is great when you're sitting in your NGO provided air- conditioned office. But a few tens of thousands of miners might disagree with the definition of 'minimal'. For them it likely was all of their income.

I'm all for change like this but I would prefer a more gradual approach. Such as 'no new people are allowed to be hired for mining' or other more or less automatic mechanisms.

<comment><USER23> It seems to be a bad deal to get a few thousand jobs at the cost of severe damage to the environment and public health, while all the money is shifted out of the country.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. But given the level of social security in El Salvador it will definitely cause some problems. The problem is the latter: all the money being removed from their economy (as well as the resources, the value of which is only going up). This goes for almost all resource rich countries South of the equator with the exception of Australia and New-Zealand.

Colonialism is far from over, it just wears a corporate suit these days.

<comment><USER24> The bill is finally coming in the mail for 90s globalism, a dilettante movement with no regard for the future and an eye on stock market profits, the question is who is going to pay for it [1].

It's going to happen again when people realize that making Snapchat one of the most valuable stocks will torpedo the whole market and will make Pets.com look like someone spilled their drink.

[1](I am American and can clearly see that we are the ones who should shoulder this blame, and under Trump the lower half will in one way or another)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This becomes interesting. Many gemstones are also essentially metal ores. I wonder if this will affect gem and mineral mining/collecting in El Salvador, which does have a decent reputation in the mineral/gem/lapidary circle.

<comment><USER26> To the extent that gem finds are incident to bulk metal mining operations, it could decrease gem yield. But I'm not sure what the gems would be.

Stories on El Salvador's mining ban emphasize gold mining. I'm not sure what gems are found in coincidence with gold, except maybe quartz crystals in hydrothermal gold deposits.

Silver, copper, lead, zinc and titanium seem to be the other metals mined in El Salvador. Although there are collectable minerals associated with some of these (copper->azurite, malachite; lead->galena crystals), I can't immediately think of gemstones that occur in these metallic ores.

<comment><USER25> Rose quartz is a primary ore of Titanium. Asterated rose quartz comes from this area. If you have gold you likely have other heavy metals like iron in the area, which can lead to garnets. The calcium content in the area lends itself to making Epidote. Sphalerite is the primary ore of Zinc and also produces quite impressive gems. Then you'll have volcanic gem rock in the area, such as multi-colored obsidian.

<comment><USER26> Interesting, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A lot of Canadian mining companies doing really dirty work in Central America. Makes me ashamed to be Canadian. Glad to see El Salvador assert their autonomy.

<comment><USER28> Not that I doubt it - heard similar tales in Chile - but do you have specific events in mind?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Too bad we (U.S.) are a a large economy, the only way we could survive and implement this policy is if we get to space and get good at mining asteroids.

</comment><comment><USER30> Now let us hope all countries follow the suite and ban all metal mining right away.

<comment><USER31> So you're going to lead the way by stopping using any metal products, right?

Including your computer?

<comment><USER32> To such a fallacious reply the recent news of Apple deciding to only use recycled materials should be enough of a response I think.

<comment><USER31> You're asserting that the human race has mined all the metals that we'll ever need. Do you really think that's a reasonable position?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Have they lost the plot? Has HN lost the plot in the comments supporting this.

Why not just ban science?

We need metals to live and prosper.

If it was really that minimal as per 'NGO' advise then the pollution would be minimal.

Why not just make companies pay fines if they polute? The government obviously doesn't kowtow to them?

Perhaps if their people weren't so poor you could excuse banning things like gold and diamond. But this (as the article tells it, I doubt it's close to the full story) is like going back to the middle ages.

<comment><USER34> So, you're ok if I open up a company in your town and dump mercury and tailings into the water your children drink?

I suggest that you visit or at least read about El Salvador or Guatemala. No insult intended, but your attitude is both ignorant and offensive.

<comment><USER24> We should call Discovery Channel, we found the lost ancestor of Hernan Cortes in OP</comment></comment></comment>


Segways meet resistance in Boston neighborhood - <AUTHOR> http://www.universalhub.com/2010/city-council-consider-banning-segways-busy-sidewal

<comment><USER2> I have a Segway.

I always stop when other people are walking toward me on the sidewalk; it makes them more comfortable.

The other important thing to watch out for are blind corners - where obstacles prevent others from seeing you. I do my very best to stop so that I don't surprise anyone.

Why doesn't this guy just push for the ability to issue tickets to impolite Segway users instead?

Banning Segways has repercussions that this guy probably hasn't considered. Remember that nationwide, well over a third of all Segway users are physically disabled in some way, and around here, at least two of the three owners that I know are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Note that the discussion in Boston also relates to complaints in the North End, where tourists can rent Segways and local residents complain about the vehicles and the attitudes of the owner of the rental service. Background here:

[http://www.universalhub.com/2010/some-north-enders-fed- tour-...](http://www.universalhub.com/2010/some-north-enders-fed-tour-groups- segways)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Segways are annoying, but can't Boston just let people figure out how to share space on the sidwalk without more regulations?

<comment><USER4> _"In any sufficiently large group of people, most are idiots"._

Take the subway in Boston. You'd be baffled at the ingress/egress difficulties encountered. People block the doors. Passengers boarding don't wait for passengers departing to exit the cars before they attempt to force their way in. People are reluctant to take a seat between other people (especially women when the seat is between two men), reducing standing space. Standing passengers do not move towards the ends or center of the cars to allow more passengers to board.

This is usually accompanied by at least 30 seconds of announcements from the on-board spotter over the train's intercom system. Per stop. I've seen this take as long as 90 seconds.

<comment><USER5> Wow, that's pretty awful. I've only been living in NYC for 2 years, but I've totally absorbed all of these etiquette rules that are fairly well ingrained in the local culture. Still, I find myself gritting my teeth a few times a week when they are breached. I've never thought of myself as a tense person, but I swear my body temperature goes up a few degrees when boarding passengers either stand right in front the door, blocking those exiting, or worse, attempt to board _through_ the exiting passengers, somehow.

I might need medication if I ever move to Boston ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some Boston sidewalks are crowded and narrow, so I can see how adding a segway, which is about twice as wide as a person, is not a welcome addition.

<comment><USER7> Width of a Segway: 25"

Width of a Bugaboo Cameleon: 23.9"

I'd like to see the Boston city council try to ban strollers.

<comment><USER8> That's a specious comparison. People make all sorts of concessions for people with children. People who want to drive their mechanical devices on the sidewalk, not so much.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, the number of upmods that guy is getting is giving me an uneasy feeling. It's about the starkest apples vs. oranges fallacy I've ever seen. Can someone actually present a non-idiotic argument as to why motor vehicles should be allowed on sidewalks? Unless you're disabled, I can't even conceive of it. Nothing but an ugly menace.

<comment><USER10> So I guess the question is - should disabled people be able to use these devices on the sidewalks (with appropriate license/plate)? And should non- disabled folks be able to use them in bike lanes? Etc? Honest question, I have never ridden a Segway but want to try it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Crowds are actually what segways are best at. You can easily control your speed and turn in place. There is a reason mall cops use them rather then bikes.

<comment><USER12> I thought it was because they were too obese to walk from one end of the mall to the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, you can't rid bicycles on the sidewalks in most major cities either. So I don't think it's an example of people fearing new and different modes of transportation.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ah, the Segway. Remember when they were saying it was going to revolutionize travel, and then when it was revealed to be this dorky scooter, everyone let out a collective "oh..."?

<comment><USER12> Yeah it was called "It" during the pre-unveiling hype, while, everyone wondering what "It" was... I think Steve Jobs said something like "they are going to design cities around this thing."

And now Boston says "This is a walkable city, not a Segway city."</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What next after burning out? - <AUTHOR> After 10 years in Silicon Valley and several very early stage startups, I've burned out. Worst of all, I've completely lost all motivation and desire to continue doing what I've always done and loved.
I have a new job that is very low stress and low commitment. I hate it. The company is poorly run and I don't have the drive to do anything about it. Every time I talk to a new company about positions I lose interest at the thought of going through the process or onboarding at a new company.
I've considered and pursued other positions outside of engineering such as PM, eng manager and similar positions. But because I've spent my entire career at early stage startups my experience on paper is limited to engineering systems so even progressing in my career is not an option as companies want experienced managers and people with proven experience for other positions. Essentially 10 years of experience is worthless even though I have been doing those things. Just not as a my official job.
My past experiences at startups has almost entirely soured me on every company I come across. I'm now negative and skeptical about everything. No company sounds interesting. I think every founder I talk to is full of shit. Every product is crap and a waste of time.
Maybe even the worst thing is that I don't even have motivation to do my own project. Every time I sit in front of a computer to write code I stop almost immediately stop. I've been burned by Silicon Valley so much that I don't even want to try anymore.
I don't know what to do next. <comment> J-dawg I've been having some therapy recently, and one of the things the therapist has pointed out is that the more anxious I am, the more I make negative generalisations. I believe this is quite a common pattern in anxiety & depression.

I couldn't help noticing that your post contains several generalisations (' _every_ founder is full of shit', ' _every_ product is crap', 'my 10 years of experience is _worthless_ ').

We're all wired in different ways, and this might only be a small component of your problem, but it might be worth talking to someone about generalised anxiety or similar.

I hope this doesn't come across as patronising or anything. It's just something I learned about myself recently that could be useful for you too.

</comment><comment><USER2> Persist somehow until you've banked enough pto and get the hell away from wherever you are. Go on a roadtrip or camping or a hike. I'm not a doctor but consider using some of nature's natural medicines. (Not that a doctor would ever advise you to do that of course)

Perhaps you may be depressed, seek counseling and see if that helps.

It can be a rough world out there. Look at what you have though, a ton of valuable experience that you can apply towards the right opportunity when the time is right.

Hang in there, time changes if nothing else, and that may be all you need.

<comment><USER3> I would agree with this.

It sounds like it's a mental health issue, not an issue with your skills or the marketplace. You just need to heal your mind, and nature and a good vacation or break can do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just got out of my burnout phase. It's similar - I've done a lot of startups.

It took me well over a year to get out of it. I spent practically a year playing games (thanks acquisition money!) My only job was teaching for a while.

I honestly don't know what worked.

The games, travel, spas, and idle time didn't help much. If anything, they made me feel worse about spending lots of money and time. They pressured me to do more.

Freelancing was such a terrible idea. I ended up losing money and getting even more burnt out. After that, I refused to do any coding at all for a while.

The teaching assignments helped quite a bit. It was well paid and I got to achieve my bucket list of visiting every state in the country. Teaching is also really easy with enough years under your belt and it's relaxing to have a lot to say. It's even more relaxing if they pay well.

I did a lot of exercise. Felt better than ever, but didn't cure it. Same with meditation.

I think what finally got me out of it was working 7 days a week on low difficulty tasks. It sounds really dumb to treat burnout with more work, but it worked for me. Maybe startup people have their comfort zone working 60 hours a week?

You might not even want to do hard work coding. Try working in F&B or some other grunt job. Somehow it was like a meditative process. Just do something that feels like it's not a total waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm right there with you. Except, I've been doing corporate jobs but no one wants to hire outside something your experienced in. So I'm stuck. And the thought of even interviewing disgust me.

</comment><comment><USER6> Take some time off. The clarity you get from disengaging will be stunning (or so I'v seen). I generally think for X years of high stress it takes 1-2 months per year. So you'll need 1-2 years to recharge.

It might be difficult financially. I don't know your situation on how feasible that is. Perhaps you have family and other hard commitments. But I think in general people tend to overestimate the cost. Wind back your outgoings. Head somewhere cheap. Meditate, exercise, eat fresh food.

</comment><comment><USER7> A vacation followed by a career stint as a mentor for an accelerator or within an incubator may be your best shot? You have grown the anticorps first hand and know exactly where sense becomes bullsh*t, so you may be good at providing reality checks while acting the bad cop in these environments imho.

</comment><comment><USER8> Take a very long vacation from work?

(Your experience is not worthless, if you've been doing the relevant work then some companies will hire you even if it doesn't match previous job titles. But if you're this burned out you should probably not think about it.)

</comment><comment><USER9> The United States is an overworked, competitive culture to the point of being toxic.

For me, the key to a long, fulfilling life is finding what makes you happy in life. It really is too short to be miserable.

Right now, I'm working remotely from a sunny, beach city in Vietnam and was previously touring many islands in Thailand. Southeast Asia has been EPIC. I love not being in the United States right now. I strongly suggest traveling to a country you've wanted to go to. Also meditation in group classes really helps.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sad how this afflicts so many of us - it truly is terrible. And yet I bet we're all thinking 'may be there's a startup idea in here somewhere?' which may be the source of the problem.

</comment><comment><USER11> Maybe go to a country and bring the tribal knowledge only found in SV to tackle problems never found in SV.

Plenty of countries with bright people who are like miscalibrated, misaimed, lasers looking for a target to pulverize.

</comment><comment><USER12> Get a hobby, start a side project. Your job should be to fund your lifestyle, hobbies and side project.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm sorry to hear. I can definitely sympathize with what you're going through and currently recovering myself. This is just my perspective, of course.

The hardest thing to get past, and the first one I encountered, is the very real sense that what I'm doing right now is a mistake or a poor fit or below me or not enough of a challenge or etc, etc. When I'm in that burn-out mode, like depression, what I see and feel is through a particular lens. So maybe it's not that bad or maybe there are parts that are enjoyable or maybe I can make it work but when I'm in it then all of that falls away. The first step for me was to realize that I can't really trust my brain to give me an active picture when I'm rushing from thing to thing and hate every minute of it.

So my way out was not to make any rash decisions but to figure out an escape plan, even if it's temporary. I've been freelance for 10 years so I was able to pare down my projects and stop taking on new ones. I'm down to basically a single client part-time and everything new that comes in the door gets referred to someone else. I've deleted all of my various Trello lists of possible businesses to start and OSS to create and contribute to and unwritten blog posts. If I'm at a computer then I'm working with that one client. If I'm not I'm playing with my kids or riding a bike or building something in the garage.

The reduced stress, reduced time in front of a screen, and less demands on my time are very slowing starting to add up to what feels like recovery. I can trust myself a little better and have been surprised by what bubbles to the surface as important to do. It becomes easier to say no and enjoy life a little more and make better decisions. I feel like I've still got a long way to go but I don't dread my keyboard anymore.

For me, the pressure of "make a hugely important decision about your life right now! you're running out of time! you hate every minute!" was immense. It just felt like this always-looming thing that I had no answers to. What company to start or join? What idea to build? What person to meet? WHAT NEXT?!?! Once I started letting go of that question and just focusing on the absolute basics - spend time with people, work enough to pay the bills, get some exercise, eat well - then I become more competent to answer that question. It's like trying to do your best work at 8pm after a 12 hour day. Just not going to happen.

One more thing that I found can be tough but helpful. Regardless of what you're doing at any given minute, charge yourself with doing the best job of it that you possibly can. Not just for you but for those around you. Even if you're fixing spaghetti CSS or washing dishes or driving or cooking or anything else, tell yourself "I'm going to do this thing the best I possibly can right now." Good things will happen as a result but concentrate only on the action itself. I've found that I enjoy what I do far more, regardless of what it is, if I stay really present and let go of whether the task is enough of a challenge or enjoyable.

Hope that helps. Good luck out there.</comment>


Sen. Ron Wyden: PIPA/SOPA Is a Congressional Wake-Up Call - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/01/wyden-pipa-sopa-wake-up/

<comment><USER2> During an election, it may not always be clear which candidate voters will choose, but it is absolutely certain that those candidates need a lot of money just to get on the ballot. As a result, the U.S. government's course has been charted by lobbyists and their money for a very long time now, and that isn't likely to change unless the U.S. starts capping campaign contributions per donor like other nations do. (This is actually a very good idea!) So how important is public opinion really? Not very important at all, in the long run. Yes, PIPA/SOPA met heavy opposition, but will the same bill with a different name get the same response next year? How about the year after? What about a dozen different bills that incorporate all the bits and pieces of SOPA/PIPA separately? Paid lobbyists will always win in the long run.

Internet companies like google are being threatened with crushing government regulations just as Hollywood was in the 1920's. Hollywood's response was a combination of heavy lobbying and just barely enough self-regulation, in the form of the production code, to escape government regulation. The code was abandoned in the 60's, but Hollywood hasn't let up lobbying since. It's arguable that they have actually achieved a form of regulatory capture when it comes to copyright laws. e.g. The funny coincidence between how long copyrights last and the age of Mickey Mouse.

The real wake-up call that SOPA/PIPA has provided is not to the public, the government, or to the MPAA/RIAA. It's to companies that rely on the internet for their revenue. That revenue dwarfs Hollywood. Literally. Regardless of what the public wants or what lobbyists say, legislation like SOPA/PIPA would have a far larger negative impact on the U.S. economy than burning Hollywood to the ground. So why aren't there lobby groups sticking up for internet freedom? Why was PIPA/SOPA only stopped by a grass-roots movement? The money is there. Far more than the MPAA or RIAA could ever muster in fact.

My prediction is this: ISP's, google, etc. now know that Hollywood is gunning for them. They're going to fight back with their own lobbyists, and they have a _lot_ more money. The next decade is going to be dark indeed for the MPAA/RIAA. They have awoken a juggernaut.

<comment><USER3> The problem is those lobbying money keep rising up, too. From what I hear Obama plans on raising $1 billion for his re-election campaign. That means in the future other candidates will try to raise a lot more, too, and so on.

This is bad. I think we need to limit how much any single individual or entity can pay for a campaign. Elections shouldn't be decided by who raises the most money, and according to a statistic 98% of those who won elections also had the most money. I really believe that needs to end somehow.

Unlimited donations from single individuals/companies just means that much more power will held by those single individuals and companies, and you can bet that the first thing the politicians will do when they get in office is to pay back thoe money.

<comment><USER4> But that would abridge our first amendment rights, because money is speech. Although for some reason, the police didn't see it that way when I tried $100 worth of talking a lady on the street corner into going on a date with me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _While some have derided the events of last week as a departure from the way > we do things in Washington_

What? Who?

> _If members of Congress better understood the digital world, they would know > that downloading a digital good from a foreign site is no different than > importing goods from a foreign country_

WHAT? HOW?

Note: I realise this is supposed to be one of the good guys who gets it. This makes that second statement all the more worrying!

<comment><USER6> Can you be a bit more specific about the latter? I don't really get what's so wrong with that.

<comment><USER7> From the recipient's perspective, the two are pretty drastically different.

Importing goods from a foreign country involves some rather substantial regulatory burdens along with the more mundane timing/transportation issues associated with the travel distance.

Pulling data off a foreign website is no different for the recipient than it is anywhere else. Even the issues created by the physical distance are relatively minor. This comparison doesn't recognize that difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll tell you what should be a huge wake up call to most congressmen: When I was petitioning my 2 senators on PIPA, I found that their web form for constituents to submit letters were truly terrible. Each one required that I pick a category for my letter. Only one of my two senators even had "Technology" as a category that I could choose for submitting a letter.

One of my senators, Richard Blumenthal, had no category for Technology or the Internet. I had to file my letter under "Other." When a US senator doesn't even have an option for his constituents to talk to him about the Internet, you know they just don't understand technology. The Internet is probably by now the largest conduit through which money flows globally, outside of ForEx. These dinosaurs ignore it at their own peril.

</comment><comment><USER9> Congressional job approval rating has been hovering around 10% for quite some time. Worse than Nixon during Watergate. The powerful incumbents responsible for the clusterfuck will remain in power. The swing seats will continue to be passed back and forth, perhaps a bit more quickly. That is the nature of our two-party republic.

<comment><USER10> We need term limits so badly. Most any business would atrophy with the same leadership for 3 decades.

<comment><USER11> I've always felt a little conflicted regarding term limits. While they are one possible solution for cutting dead weight, the problem is you also end up needlessly firing people who do a good job.

<comment><USER12> Not to mention there won't be much of an incentive to work better (at least when they near their end of term).

<comment><USER13> To play devil's advocate: potentially that just means that elected officials would spend more effort running for different positions. House reps. near their term limits would be more likely to run for senate. Senators would run for governor/president. Etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> C'mon, everyone understands "the central role that the Internet plays in their constituents' lives", more or less. What they don't understand is how the Internet _works_. I doubt that before last week there weren't more than a dozen Congressmen who could explain DNS, never mind think through the implications of filtering. All of that was for the "experts", whom Congress turned to for "assurances" that everything would be okay. The media were scarcely better.

So they're no better than their experts, who are, hello, conflicted, or / and cherry-picked by conflicted players.

If we really want to get out of this lobbying complex, we might insist that our representatives demonstrate some actual knowledge before they legislate.

</comment><comment><USER15> I certainly hope so. Thankfully, the cat is out of the bag on the US Government (and most government's, it seems) shutting down or controlling the internet.

</comment><comment><USER16> Congress isn't like a business with a bad review. It's like a business with a bad review and they can censor the medium where the bad review appears.

</comment><comment><USER17> And this shows further why Congress would want to restrict access by the people to the Internet. If they can get control in place that makes it like cable news where unpopular opinions are buried or shouted off the Net then they can pass SOPA, PIPA, NDAA, ACTA, or whatever the hell else they want without people having the Internet to inform them what is going on.

<comment><USER18> The presence of the Internet didn't do anything for the NDAA, and it didn't do anything for ACTA until it was too late. The revolt we saw on the web over SOPA/PIPA was unique.

Anonymous was up in arms over ACTA years ago, but we didn't achieve much beyond taking down a few sites for a day or so and making a few videos whose grandiosity would have made Newt proud. If we really want to ensure that the Internet can be mobilized again, we would do well to analyze the last mobilization and determine what made it different. Here's my stab at it:

1) A lot of people were pissed off about SOPA for a long time before the blackout. SOPA stories started to dominate Reddit and HN, and Wikipedia was talking about a blackout long before anyone else did.

2) Engagement from politicians like Wyden, Issa, and Lundgren with SOPA detractors when all seemed lost gave hope, and made it seem like it was possible to have an effect. We would do well to keep lines of communication with these officials open, and repay their hard work when election time rolls around.

3) Popular opinion coalesced around a blackout long before any site had announced one. SOPA detractors were talking about how to get big sites to particilate in a blackout way back in early December.

4) Someone set a damned date. Though it was widely ridiculed on HN, some random redditor said, "we're doing it on January 18", and that was that. The moderators of r/SOPA agreed to black out that subreddit on the 18th, then when it was announced that Alexis would be testifying before congress on the 18th, the reddit admins followed suit. Setting a date on reddit finally kicked the Wikipedia discussions into high gear, and the rest of the dominos followed.

5) We had public figureheads like Alexis and Jimmy Wales to liaison with Old Media and congress. The importance of this can't be overstated. Alexis put a (freakishly tall and charismatic) face on the internet, and we can't ignore the effect of that on old media.

6) Obvious, but worth noting: we had large organizations participating. People at those organizations semi-independently decided that a blackout was a good idea, and some announced they were taking action long before it was what all the cool kids were doing. Special props to Ben Huh on this; the Cheezburger network was one of the first outside of reddit and Wikipedia to join the blackout.

7) The owner-as-user: thousands of smaller sites, whose owners/operators are far more Internet addict than industry titan, decided to put their livelihood on the line and join the blackout. This one will hit the game theory wonks hard, as it's the complete opposite of the Tragedy of the Commons. A bunch of people, whose independent actions wouldn't have made much difference, acted together to have a huge impact. They acted against their own individual self- interest (the blackout wouldn't have noticed their absence if they didn't participate) in pursuit of the common good. This is both laudable and noteworthy.

8) Perhaps most worryingly, the blackout was unprecedented. This means it will likely be exceedingly difficult to do again. The impact of any future action will likely be greatly reduced as it won't have the same novelty. We're really going to have to find a way around this if we plan on being able to rally the troops for a future fight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Congress wants tax revenue on websites hosted in foreign countries. The website hosting the site will be taxed on click through and the Web will have more "this site is not available in your country" messages. This is how net neutrality dies in the night. Taxing IP by import duties and surcharges. We built the most powerful tool on the planet, and governments everywhere are trying to claim sole ownership of it so they can tax it and control it until it is as politically acceptible as fox news. My freedom to visit sites anywhere in the world will be going away. I suppose it is inevitible, humans in power are extremely territorial and don't like to share like the enlightened individuals who built the internet do.

A globally free medium of data exchange limited only by bandwidth mostly unhindered by any powerful nation will be an enlightened blip on the timeline of the human race.</comment>


ECalc: Online Scientific Calculator - <AUTHOR> http://www.ecalc.com We've release a new version of our online scientific calculator called eCalc.  We've spent a ton of time designing the user interface for this project as well as supporting full complex math calculation in both polar and rectangular formats.  Also, we've created a Windows and Mac download for purchase that includes some additional features such as color schemes and a side bar.<p>Finally, my karma is not high enough to submit a poll, but eCalc supports both RPN and algebraic modes so I'd like to see what mode people prefer to use. <comment><AUTHOR> We've release a new version of our online scientific calculator called eCalc. We've spent a ton of time designing the user interface for this project as well as supporting full complex math calculations in both polar and rectangular formats. Also, we've created a Windows and Mac download for purchase that includes some additional features such as color schemes and a side bar.

Finally, my karma is not high enough to submit a poll, but eCalc supports both RPN and algebraic modes so I'd like to see what mode people prefer to use.

<comment><USER2> I'll bet that you'll find Hacker News readers prefer RPN disproportionately, since it's closer to sexp evaluation (albeit, of course, postfix instead of prefix). I prefer it because I did all my math-schoolin' years ago on an HP 48G, which also served as a platform for my introduction to programming.

I like the calculator; the only confusing part so far for me was that top row of controls--to me, they look like buttons, so I expect them to display what they'll do, instead of the current mode.</comment></comment>


Microsoft makes available test build of Python plug-in for Visual Studio 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-makes-available-test-build-of-python-plug-in-for-visual-studio-2010/8892

<comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to beta page on CodePlex: <http://pytools.codeplex.com/></comment>


Diablo 3: The Blizzard sweatshop - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/131615-diablo-3-the-blizzard-sweatshop <comment><USER2> That's exactly what this game feels like: a sweatshop. The auction house ruined all the excitement of the game for me - instead of gearing up through farming, they eliminate the "slot machine" appeal of the game by making the only way to gear up through the auction house. Basically, this means you're just running around mindlessly trying to collect as much gold as possible. I played Diablo 2 for 4 years straight; I played Diablo 3 for 2 weeks straight and shelved it. I did the same with SC2 as well... Blizzard games seem to have lost the magic for me. Obviously, I blame activision.

<comment><USER3> _instead of gearing up through farming, they eliminate the "slot machine" appeal of the game by making the only way to gear up through the auction house._

Really? Just don't use the auction house, and farm for fun if that's your thing... This is a major complaint I see all the time about D3, but it doesn't make any sense.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. People seem to mistake "Auction House exists" with "Must cash out kids' college savings to buy new sword."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> another view of the objective of the 15% tax is that Blizzard want to encourage people to leave money in the game, and not use the game as a money making machine. Sure, it doesn't stop farmers from making money off of the game, but if they want to cash out, they get taxed.

<comment><USER6> I think it's more of blizzard now make 15% of all (legitimate) gold farmer transactions.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some good books for understanding OOP?  - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I am a novice programmer, currently self-learning, would really like to understand Object Oriented Programming well. Can anyone suggest some books that are good at explaning OOP for beginners?
Thanks for the help in advance. <comment><USER2> The most important thing to realize is that "object-oriented programming" isn't a well defined term. If you don't know what it means and you pick up books about Smalltalk or CLOS, you won't really have a good grasp on the corporate C++/Java/C# environments you might be thrown into, and if you get a job interview that asks "explain OOP to me", they won't have any fucking idea what you're talking about, because by "OOP" they mean Java and by "OOP" you'll mean Smalltalk or CLOS. Likewise, if you pick up a Java book, it'll take you awhile to figure out what Smalltalkers, Lispers, and Rubyists are on about.

Unfortunately, the C++/Java conception of OOP has had a much better sales team since the 90's or so, so you can get sucked into that universe and never find your way out again. So learn OOP from multiple perspectives.

<comment><USER3> In situations like those, I feel like OOP is some of the most buzzword laden areas of CS.

Things like "Cohesion", "Layering", "Polymorphism", "Abstraction", etc.

They are all great concepts with a lot of important principles, but I drives me nuts how often I've heard them used excessively.

<comment><USER4> I would put <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liskov_substitution_principle> at the top of the list of things to understand. Language features like polymorphism and encapsulation aren't exclusively OO but they're provided because they help your designs follow LSP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In my opinion, Eric Evans' _Domain Driven Design_ is just about the only book that gets OO right. Martin Fowler's _Refactoring_ is pretty good on the technical side of things. I would avoid design patterns like the plague (edit: other than the Kent Beck Smalltalk book, which lots of smart people like - this is the one recommended by duck in this thread), but others disagree.

Don't take this as advice against learning what you want to learn, but I'd caution against the idea that "object-oriented programming" and "good programming" are the same thing (or even that they are correlated). OO in its various incarnations comes with a tremendous amount of baggage. It took me years to figure out I didn't need it, and that insight made me a much better programmer.

</comment><comment><USER6> I know you asked for a book, but as a fellow self taught person I remember this video being really valuable to me when trying to get my head around OOP.

[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2058469682761344178...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2058469682761344178#)

It is an older video of Dan Ingalls of Smalltalk fame explaining objects. I clearly remember a large light bulb going off in my head as he walked through his analogy of a hospital described as an object.

This certainly isn't comprehensive, but if you are stuck on the concept its helpful to hear someone talk it out.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think this document provides a good introduction for a beginner: [http://www.runningcode.com.au/Resources/Aitken- Framework4OO....](http://www.runningcode.com.au/Resources/Aitken- Framework4OO.pdf)

C2 is another resource worth checking out. C2 is the original "wiki". While its not always coherent and will structured, there are some real gold nuggets here: <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ObjectOrientedProgramming>

</comment><comment><USER8> I would recommend you OOSC (Object oriented software construction) by Bertrand Meyer. A mammouth book. Its length, which could be a hindrance, is its best point: you'll have plenty of explanations for every concept.

</comment><comment><USER9> Since you say you are a novice, I'd recommend Head First Design Patterns:

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596007124>

Do not jump in with the GoF Design Pattern book. :)

<comment><USER10> I thought that book was very well done, in terms of getting its lessons into your head -- but the lessons gave poor advice on the subject. (I don't remember specifics, it's been years.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Object-Oriented Design Heuristics: <http://amzn.to/hMfVA6>

This is a fantastic book on OOP design principals and has lots of language- agnostic examples.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't know of any books that sound exactly right for you, but here are a couple I like that are relevant. You might find them kind of advanced right now:

* Chapter 3 of <http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/> \-- also chapters 1 and 2.

* _Abstraction and Specification in Program Development_, on design by contract. There's a newer book by the same authors, _Program Development in Java_, but Norman Ramsey says it's not as good. (I've only read the older one.) By Liskov & Guttag. Focuses on abstract datatypes rather than OOP classic. Bertrand Meyer's _Object-Oriented Software Construction_ covers much of the same material, but not as well to my taste in the bits I dipped into.

* Also, _Smalltalk-80: The Language and Its Implementation_ at <http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/64> \-- this might be more basic than the above two. The ideas were old to me by the time I got to it, so I don't know how well it'd work for a novice.

* I've seen _A Little Smalltalk_ recommended as an intro to OO and it looks plausible: <http://www.littlesmalltalk.org/index.php?page=the-book> \-- I haven't read it myself.

</comment><comment><USER12> The Object-Oriented Thought Process ( [http://www.amazon.com/Object-Oriented- Thought-Process-3rd/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Object-Oriented-Thought- Process-3rd/dp/0672330164/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291357348&sr=1-1) ) isn't a perfect book, but it's not a bad one. It refers too much to other books, but combine that with a language text and you should get the concepts pretty well.

</comment><comment><USER13> * Smalltalk Objects And Design by Chamond Liu

* The Art of the Metaobject Protocol by Gregor Kiczales

Don't let the second one fool you. Although it is a Lisp book, it presents OOP design principles applicable to any language. As the Amazon review says: "The Art of the Meta-Object Protocol is useful for the advanced CLOS user as well as for anyone interested in object-oriented programming and language design."

<comment><USER5> Do you really think AMOP is suitable for a novice?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Check out "Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns": <http://www.amazon.com/dp/013476904X/>

Lots of OO classes use it and Smalltalk is a great language to learn OO with (but even if you don't use it, the general information will be a big help).

<comment><USER10> That's an excellent book, and relevant, but I wouldn't say it directly answers the question: it's more about coding-in-the-small than object orientation. (Those subjects can shade into each other, it's true.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I found the first chapter of Design Patterns to be the most enlightening description of OO programming I have found.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have an intense desire to contribute to the Chromium Project, however, I too am a programming novice. I know a bit of Java, but not much else.

I understand that this is a monumental end goal given my current situation, but can anyone point me in the direction of the best tutorial books that money can buy?

Good karma for anyone that responds :)

<comment><USER17> you may want to check this out: [http://www.aaronboodman.com/2010/10/wherein- i-help-you-get-g...](http://www.aaronboodman.com/2010/10/wherein-i-help-you- get-good-job.html)

It seems that your first step is to to find good C++ resources: <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/155762/best-c-resource>

Hope this helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Object Oriented Programming by Timothy Budd. Its the starting book that I got and is proving very helpful to me.

</comment><comment><USER19> I highly recommend Head First Java, which focuses on OOP using Java. The entire Head First series is very well written, and focuses on practical _learning_ rather than reference or academia as a lot of the suggestions do.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you all for the suggestions. Its given me a lot of food for thought.</comment>


Ford Goes WiFi With Mobile Hotspots For SYNC Vehicles - <AUTHOR> http://www.motorauthority.com/blog/1040535_ford-goes-wifi-with-mobile-hotspots-for-sync-vehicles

<comment><USER2> Very cool, this reminds me of the TED talk by ZipCar founder who wants cars to become wi-fi spots, creating an ad-hoc national network.

[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robin_chase_on_zipcar_and...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/robin_chase_on_zipcar_and_her_next_big_idea.html)

<comment><USER3> I wonder how much money a car manufacturer could bring in by turning their entire vehicle output as wi-fi spots for a mesh network. I know there are tel- co's in my area that want customers but cannot buy-out the fibre network from competitors. As they're already cellular providers a wi-fi mesh network with 3G internet could enable them access to an entire city.

It could be simple to establish, simply offer everyone with a warranty free in-vehicle wi-fi when they bring it in for anything. With every warrantied vehicle required to return for an oil change within 3-6 months, you can turn tens of thousands of cars into a wi-fi mesh. This could turn dense-urban areas into mesh networks very rapidly, with a maximum of 6 months till a dense network is developed.

Heck add a processor, ram and a SSD to the wi-fi device and you could sell your car network's processing power for use as a supercomputer for data crunching purposes. The potential is massive and could provide major innovation and income opportunities that vehicle manufacturers have never thought of.

<comment><USER4> I always figured there was an interesting opportunity for mesh networks on cars going down the highway. From car to car communication, transporting large data chunks down the highway (stored on car for several mile between mesh endpoints), or even emergency broadcasts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >The worst part? We'll have to wait until the introduction of Ford's second- gen SYNC system sometime next year.

No, the worst part is the fact that you need to buy _a new car_ to get a clean solution to wireless.

I recently bought a car with built-in bluetooth and satellite nav; it's my first car with any serious user-computer interaction. I bought the car used, built in '06. What I realized is that what I really want is for the satellite nav screen to be a secondary output for my iphone. I don't want their nav, I want to just run google maps. I don't want to sync my phone contacts list into the car's phone contacts. AFAIK, there is no way to send an address from my iphone to the nav system, and the nav UI is terrible.

When new cars cost two orders of magnitude more than new phones, there really needs to be a better interface. There's no justification to buying a car because it has an ipod dock or whatever the next big thing is. The computer screen in the car should be an open API for the iphone to plug into, and the iphone should have an open API for controlling external monitors and input devices (once the hardware supports it). For me, this is the solution to pg's "iphone as a development platform".

Of course, the car manufacturers will have none of it. There's a reason car computer technology is 5-10 years behind consumer electronics.</comment>


Schlitterbahn's Tragic Slide - <AUTHOR> https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/jeff-henry-verruckt-schlitterbahns-tragic-slide/ <comment><USER2> The really tragic thing is that the father of the killed 10 year old was a Kansas legislator who voted for a cap on damages (max $300K) when someone is killed due to negligence. A quirk in Kansas law allows for Kansans injured by out-of-state parties to apply the laws of the state where the other party is located. So Scott Schwab parlayed the payout for his son's death from $300,000 to $20 million, all while denying the same to his constituents injured by Kansas companies.

[https://www.injuryrelief.com/blog/how-is-representative- scot...](https://www.injuryrelief.com/blog/how-is-representative-scott-schwab- not-a-hypocrite/)

<comment><USER3> Any of his constituents injured by out of state parties can do exactly the same thing he did. Any injury he suffers at the hands of a Kansas company will be subject to the same damage limits that such injuries suffered by his constituents are.

I don't see how this is either hypocrisy (as alleged in the article you link to) or denying his constituents some benefit that is allowed to him (as you claim).

I am curious _why_ Kansas law allows in the case of an out-of-state tortfeasor applying the laws of the tortfeasor's state for damage limits. (I assume that it is still Kansas law determines whether or not a tort was committed?)

If the tort _occurred_ in another state, and the Kansas victim elected to sue in Kansas, then I believe that normal choice of law rules would have the Kansas court apply the laws of the state where the tort occurred, both for determining whether there is liability, and determining the damages (Kansas law, though, for rules of procedure and rules of evidence).

But here the tort occurred in Kansas, so I'm confused. The only theory that comes to mind is that this is meant to make Kansas more attractive as a home state to companies.

For instance, suppose you are going to set up a company that primarily serves customers in Kansas and Texas. If you make Texas your home, you will be subject to Texas damage limits on your torts in Texas against Texans, and because of the Kansas tort quirk you will also be subject to Texas damage limits on your torts against Kansans in Kansas.

If, on the other hand, you make Kansas your home, you will will be subject to Texas damages on your torts against Texans in Texas, but on your torts against Kansans in Kansas the damages will be limited by the $300k Kansas limit on Kansas companies.

If this is the reason, I wonder if it could be challenged on interstate commerce grounds? Making the damage limit on torts committed in Kansas lower for Kansas companies than for companies in states with higher damage limits advantages Kansas businesses.

<comment><USER4> > I don't see how this is either hypocrisy

Seriously, you don't? It's all "over burdensome regulation" and "tort lawyers looking for a huge payday" until it's YOUR child that is hurt or killed. Legislator is damn lucky the tortfeasor was from out of state.

<comment><USER3> > Seriously, you don't?

No, I don't. The definition of hypocrisy is "the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform".

He voted for a law that resulted in reduced damages for torts committed in Kansas by Kansas companies but did not reduce damages for torts committed in Kansas by non-Kansas companies, at least in some circumstances [1].

This suggests that his moral standards or beliefs at the time he voted for the law were that out-of-state companies should be subject to higher damages than Kansas companies [2]. (That's a crappy moral standard and belief, but that's not relevant from a hypocrisy perspective).

He later was a plaintiff in a tort case against a non-Kansas company, and asked for higher damages than he would be able to get from a Kansas company. This is not acting in a way that does not conform to moral standards or beliefs that his vote suggests he holds.

The essence of hypocrisy is telling everyone to act one way and then acting in a different way yourself. Here he is acting in the same way the law he voted for allows all Kansans to act, so we cannot infer hypocrisy.

That doesn't mean he should not be criticized strongly. The law he voted for is very bad on two counts. First, by severely limiting damages on torts committed by Kansas companies, it harms those company's Kansas victims.

Second, by having different limits depending on whether it is a Kansas company or not, it means that different Kansas plaintiffs who suffer similar injuries from a tortfeasor in Kansas can face vastly different damage limits depending on where the tortfeasor happens to be incorporated. That's fundamentally unfair.

[1] The injury lawyer blog that was cited just says there is "apparently" a "quirk" in Kansas law, and the cite is just a newspaper article that just says it may have something to do with choice of law, so it is not clear exactly how this thing came about.

[2] I'm assuming that there is some basic competence on the part of the Kansas legislature and their staff that actually prepare legislation, so that when they decided to lower damage limits on torts they knew about this mysterious quirk and knew that they were writing their legislation in a way that would not eliminate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this article makes too much of the fact that they were not engineers (I say this as a person with two engineering degrees), and too little of the fact that this was by far not the first indication of problems. I can't find the HN link now, but the official government report was pretty damning. There were numerous incidents that lead to injuries, numerous reports that rafts had gone airborne when they shouldn't have, numerous times when employees expressed reservations or misgivings about this ride. It doesn't take an engineering degree, or any degree, to respond to what you see happening. This accident didn't come out of nowhere, and they had many previous indications that there was a problem.

<comment><USER6> I believe one of the reason we have professional engineering licenses which require years of working under a PE is because an engineering degree is simply not enough to weed out the loons and incompetents.

I worked for 10 years for a industrial controls company and I have a wildly more conservative attitude towards safety than most of the engineers, especially CS people I know. Far as I can tell this doesn't correlate to a having an accredited degree at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> From KC. The indictment [1][2] is pretty bad. There were multiple reported injuries that were decently severe leading up to the final incident. One of the guys full blown destroyed reports. Which led some 17 yo kid to become a whistle blower and go to detectives. I'll agree this article attempts to paint this guys a slightly more favorable light and should of went more in depth into the actual misconduct of some of the persons involved. KC Star did some really good reporting on this whole incident even leading up to it I believe they were calling into question the safety.

[1] [https://www.kansascity.com/latest- news/article206611679.ece/...](https://www.kansascity.com/latest- news/article206611679.ece/BINARY/Read%20the%20full%20Schlitterbahn%20corporation%20indictment#storylink=readmore_inline)

[2] [https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/977310924804579329](https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/977310924804579329)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm frankly surprised that more people haven't died at Schlitterbahn. Although this article appears to reference negligence at a corporate level, you have to keep in mind that the staff is comprised largely of high school aged kids, and all it takes is a few moments of inattention for someone to drown on these rides.

Case in point, I could have easily drowned as a kid when one of the staff allowed too many riders in tubes to go down a chute at once, creating a log jam at the bottom that I got pulled underneath. The strong current held me underneath other riders' tubes for a good thirty seconds or so until the jam loosened. No one noticed or cared even as I came up coughing and sputtering.

Don't get me wrong, most of the staff seemed to take their job pretty seriously, but in a place as crowded and inherently dangerous as this it doesn't take much for someone to get hurt.

</comment><comment><USER9> When I was a kid, we went to TX (I'm from Germany) and everyone recommended going to New Braunfels because it's so German.

We were quite shocked to see how german it was. It seemed like a hideout for traditional german values (as in conquering Poland) - no pleasant memory.

<comment><USER10> .

<comment><USER9> Just a personal memory about the weirdness of having expat communities serving as a time capsule. They took the then German culture and forked it. From today's perspective it would be similar to playing bioshock where a similar cultural fork happened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> An interesting thing to calculate is the actual fatality rate, in deaths per passenger-km. The article mentions that ~100K riders had already taken it, and the ride is ~100m in length or 0.1km (data found elsewhere on the Internet), so that nicely works out to 1 in 10K passenger-km.

In contrast, the fatality rate of driving in the US is in the 1 in 100 _M_ range, so the ride was far more dangerous than driving. That gives a good perspective on the risk.

</comment><comment><USER12> My grandma lives not far from Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels. I remember one incident, probably back in 1990 when I was 5 or so, I was at my grandma's house and some cousins came down to go to Schlitterbahn.

They went without me (was perfectly fine enjoying myself on my grandma's 20 acre property) and they all came back later that night. But the next morning my one cousin, probably 12-14, stayed in the back room and never came out. Everyone kept bringing her food and water through out the day but she never came out.

I finally asked what was wrong to which my (somewhat crude mouthed) grandma only stated that she hurt herself on a ride and now her vagina is all swelled up and so she can't walk. Being 5yo I really wasn't sure what the heck that meant. Actually, I'm still not sure. But the best I can conjecture was she rode this one really tall water slide where you sit on a plastic sled and I assume the sled came out from under her and when she hit the "water brake", it flew in between her legs. But I don't know, and I'm not going to ask...

<comment><USER13> There is a steep slide in a german water park that women aren't allowed to ride. The reason is that if ridden with legs spread, water can forcefully enter the vagina and cause injuries. So that's a real possibility.

<comment><USER14> Wouldn't that hurt men even more? If they spread legs there are privates and men tend to be sensitive when those are hit.

<comment><USER15> >Wouldn't that hurt men even more?

More than the internal injuries that could be caused by water forcibly entering the vagina? Probably not.

<comment><USER14> Vagína is pretty strong, it holds during childbirth. Males parts can be injured easily.

<comment><USER16> That's the wrong direction, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brian-armstrong This article seems to romanticize the ride's creators. Why? They built a ride that injured and killed from their own intentional neglect. The men should be regarded as murderers.

<comment><USER17> From Texas. I feel that the article is trying to describe a Texan perspective of this disaster, reconciling the reality of the criminal negligence and death with the _very_ heavy nostalgia and romance most Texans have for the New Braunfels park, pretty much synonymous with childhood for many of us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Somewhat alarming that the net and hoops which are presumably there as a safety mechanism to prevent leaving the track completely ended up causing fatal injury.

<comment><USER11> Indeed, they probably caught his head and then quite naturally, ripped it off. It seems almost common sense to use something smoother and softer, but as the saying goes, "common sense isn't common".

You can see them in this video of the ride (start at 1:00)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZsK7zSCJ2w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZsK7zSCJ2w)

<comment><USER19> According to the article, the metal hoop seems to have caught him in the neck. I can't imagine being there in the raft, nor being there as a bystander, watching.

<comment><USER20> Having just taken the kids to the new braunfels location..

Oddly, master blaster continues to have the same net and hoop layout. I wondered about it years ago when I first rode that ride.

[https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=master+blaster+schlitte...](https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=master+blaster+schlitterbahn&view=detail&mid=808F2FB1F90E4B13E63F808F2FB1F90E4B13E63F&FORM=VIRE)

While I didn't ride it this time (the wait is generally really long), I think I was more aware of the fact that there are a lot of dangerous areas in the park. A couple years ago when my kids were younger, I saw first hand how just a bit of running on wet concrete can result in some serious road rash. The park is very responsive to these kinds of injuries, but they must be very common.

This time I came away with the idea that these parks are built around 70's era don't protect the kids from the daily bumps bruises of life mindset. If there were actual regulation, I suspect there would be a _LOT_ of changes forced on by the safty crazies.

For starters, many of the rides should probably require helmets. I myself cracked my head (twice) against concrete tube chutes after having fliped off tubes in fairly minor drops (just a few feet).

Maintenance isn't really top notch either, years ago I remember sitting at a picnic table on a windy day and a fairly large limb broke off a nearby tree and missed a woman and her baby by inches.

This probably won't keep me from going again next year. The place is a blast, and if you do manage to injure yourself, there is literally a hospital across the street. It does make me more respectful of the attractions though, something I don't think most people going there really understand. Water + speed + hard objects will result it some injuries. Hopefully like many other activities (riding a bike/skate board, jumping off cliffs, climbing trees, etc) the user learns where their limits are and if they exceed them, the injuries aren't life threatening.

<comment><USER21> Australia seems to have a lot of regulation in an effort to protect children form injury. As an example, it is not permissible to in the local outdoor pool _with a ball_. It's not permissible to use a ball in the park surrounding the pool.

 _You can 't use a ball in the park._

I don't really understand this. Surely a tennis ball can't cause a person to drown. I suppose you could intentionally throw it hard enough at a persons head to cause serious injury, especially a small child. It just seems unlikely that would be occur accidentally.

The red strike-through circles indicating activity _not allowed_ on signs as you approach the pool and park area tell a short story. Of sterile boredom. Okay, I'm overreacting.

And, sadly, yet people still die in waterpark accidents here.[1]

1\. [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-25/four-people-dead- ride-...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-25/four-people-dead-ride-at- dreamworld-gold-coast/7963880)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Instead of using fundamental mathematical and physics calculations to design and build the ride, the two men had "rushed forward relying almost entirely on crude trial-and-error methods." And although they realized that their finished product "guaranteed that rafts would occasionally go airborne in a manner that could severely injure or kill the occupants," they went ahead and opened the ride anyway."

Yep. All you have to do is _look_ at the thing and apply some basic mechanical principles (like conservation of energy) to know that you're rolling the dice. Just a little less friction to dissipate energy on the way to the top of the second hill and -- whee! -- you're airborne.

<comment><USER23> The worst are the nets and semicircular loops to which the nets are attached [1]. To me it is obvious that if you go airborne on the second hill (that has these nets, too), you will drag the net with you – it might as well not even exist. All that remains to keep you inside is the metal loops. Well, you are now flying through a cheese grater.

[1] [https://www.texasmonthly.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/07/HR_S...](https://www.texasmonthly.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/07/HR_SCHLITTERBAHN9_0818.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The ride was also loaded badly with two very heavy passengers in back — exceeding 600 pounds — and a 65 pound kid in front. They need to enforce weight limits even at the risk of "offending" passengers.

</comment><comment><USER25> FTA:

      What's more, according to court documents, the
      investigators learned that on July 3, 2014, one week
      before the ride's grand opening, an engineering firm
      hired by Jeff and Schooley to perform accelerometer tests
      on Verrückt's rafts had issued a report suggesting that
      if the combined weight of the three passengers in a raft
      was between 400 and 550 pounds—the weight Jeff and
      Schooley had agreed was appropriate—there was a chance
      the raft would go airborne on the second hill. The ride
      opened anyway, with the weight range unchanged.

So that sounds pretty damning.

<comment><USER21> From the indictment:

39\. HENRY remarked, "[Verrückt] could hurt me, it could kill me, it is a seriously dangerous piece of equipment today because there are things that we don't know about. Every day we learn more. __* I 've seen what this one has done to the crash dummies and to the boats we sent down it. Ever since the prototype. And we had boats flying in the prototype too. __* It 's complex, it's fast, it's mean. If we mess up, it could be the end. I could die going down this ride."

These guys are going to gaol for a long time. Unfortunately, that won't undo anything.

<comment><USER25> Thanks for that. That's as bad as testimony one can get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Struggling to read this as the original Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels was pretty much the happiest place on earth to me as a kiddo.

<comment><USER27> Ugh, yes. Had the same reaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does Schlitterbahn have a higher fatal accident rate than other water parks? Other amusement parks?

This incident is horrific in its graphic details but is it actually exceptional?

<comment><USER29> Getting decapitated by a water slide is exceptional. The only other cases I can find about amusement park decapitations involve people being struck by roller coasters after they either entered a restricted area or were thrown out of a roller coaster. This case might be the only one of someone being decapitated while they stayed in the ride vehicle. Keep in mind that deaths at amusement parks are very rare, typically only two or three per year in the United States. And that's among all amusement parks. Most of those deaths are either due to pre-existing medical conditions or safety devices failing and people being ejected from the ride vehicle.

This case is neither. The kid died because the tallest water slide in the world was designed through trial and error by a guy with no experience in physics or engineering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I used to work in an office at Cerner where you could see this slide from my floor - really sad when it happened.

</comment><comment><USER31> I was surprised to discover the article didn't mention any engineers that had worked on the design or implementation being sued for damages. Nor did the article mention any engineers who refused to construct or otherwise work on the tallest and most dangerous waterslide in the world.

Perhaps engineers in other fields are not so different from software engineers after all, published code of conduct aside.

<comment><USER32> Part of the insanity here is that there were no engineers involved in the design of the slide. It was largely designed by a co-owner of the park who possessed "no technical of engineering skills."

<comment><USER31> I read that too... I just don't believe it. That seems ridiculous to me. Would they have to hire an army of handymen to do the construction? It looks way too large and involved for that. Does the state really allow construction of something this large and involved without any engineers signing off?

If this is true, I don't think I may ever let my child into a water park. Is this true of traditional amusement parks as well, I wonder?

<comment><USER33> Their family owns a construction company that was also named in the legal filings, so I assume they built it.

It defies belief. I don't know how they got insurance for essentially homemade waterslides.

<comment><USER34> It seems like most of the insurance and regulatory process assumed independent manufacturers certifying the equipment. In this case, the manufacturer was also essentially also the park operator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From an engineering viewpoint, one thing that jumps out to me at least, is that "100,000 people including many kids" had already ridden when this sad accident happened.

In terms of real-world testing, not even 100,000 tests (or maybe ~33,300 if each raft had 3 people on it) exposed the problem.

<comment><USER35> That's giving them way too much benefit of the doubt. The problem _had_ been exposed by tests before the fatal incident. A number of passengers were injured by airborne rafts over the course of two years -- and these injuries were reported and documented by lifeguards. The problem was known even before the ride opened, thanks to independent test results from an outside engineering company.

Schlitterbahn ignored and/or attempted to cover up all of these reports, as is documented in the indictment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Word of warning... the descriptions in this article are pretty horrifying.

<comment><USER37> Caleb was my nephews best friend, and the families did a lot together. My brother-in-law said that he talked to the father after and he said the hardest part was that they all got in the car to go home after and had an empty seat.

<comment><USER38> What did the family do with the settlement money? If my son had died I would feel so terribly conflicted. Survivor's guilt would be so much worse if I got to live a life of luxury in exchange for my son.

<comment><USER7> You do realize you could like not spend the money lavish manner right?

<comment><USER38> Indeed I do! 20 million dollars is a lot of money and I would feel tempted to spend it on things to make my family's life easier/better. Yet then again if it served as a reminder of my son's death, I might be persuaded to instead donate it to a scholarship or charity in my son's name.

Thus my question. Since I don't know how I'd handle it, I'm curious how this family did.

<comment><USER7> Did they actually get that much? I can understand now why you said that given that amount of money. Although really even $1 could make someone question it's use.

<comment><USER21> From the article:

They eventually agreed that the water park and various companies associated with the design and construction of Verrückt would pay Caleb's family a $20 million settlement, an astonishing sum. The two sisters who had ridden behind Caleb, both of whom suffered facial injuries, also received a settlement, of an undisclosed amount.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I love capitalism and the idea behind laissez faire. I still think it might be the least bad thing out there but I keep coming back to stuff like this where people just don't act in their own long-term (or even short-term sometimes) interest. Caleb's gone, many people who lived in Grenfell Tower are gone, and now I think many markets where safety is critical deserve some good regulation.

> He never got a conventional education beyond high school and never formally > studied physics or engineering.

That alone isn't a bad thing. Maybe he's a visionary for these water rides. Provided you retain real engineers and take their advice, that is...

> an engineering firm ... issued a report suggesting ... there was a chance > the raft would go airborne on the second hill. The ride opened anyway, with > the weight range unchanged.

!!!

> But one of his lawyers acknowledged that Jeff didn't have such training. He > added, "Neither did Henry Ford, and he built the car."

This is actually a mildly compelling argument. Thousands died in cars for decades [1] before cars competed on safety features and real safety regulations arrived. However, today, I think and hope that other water parks and amusement ride designers _do_ conventionally use simulation and other methods to arrive at safe designs. It's not unreasonably expensive considering the total expenditure of the ride's design and construction.

States like Kansas should come up with some terribly simple low bars like requiring professionally licensed engineers to sign off on a ride's design and maintenance procedures as safe, and requiring annual inspections of ride service and incident records.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year)

<comment><USER31> Is it really possible that no licensed engineers were involved with the project, and that none of them signed off on anything significant? Based on the article, it sounds like at least one licensed engineer noticed that rafts were leaving the track.

<comment><USER39> Given that Kansas apparently allows water parks to self-assess the safety of their rides, and that the owner of the park doesn't care about safety, but has a construction background, it's not a surprise to me that no engineers were involved in the design.

It's not a good idea to build public buildings without the input of a structrural engineer, but it's not impossible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Maybe as a way to help compartmentalism from what the article is describing, I keep wondering: why do "long form" stories all seem to follow the same script?

\- Introduction to the subject

\- Introduction to the "characters"

\- "Dramatic thing began to happen, with seemingly innocuous steps taken towards the unforeseen conclusion, but then, as the thing begins to unfo—"

\- "Back in 1823, when the ancestor of the grandfather of the person who first set these steps tangentially in motion was born, baby rattles were just becoming popular..." [119 paragraphs giving a detailed biography of the main person]

\- "And now, the conclusion..."

<comment><USER41> The answer, maybe the one you're looking for is that the schema you describe is suitable for blowing up into longform stories that could be equally well- suited to be treated in 400 words or less.

The question would be, do we care for longform as a format (as opposed to having bite-sized stories with links between them if they're part of something bigger)? Or do we care about stories that have substantial background that needs to be explained (rather than be a tangential addition to a main story)?

<comment><USER42> It is not only suitable to blow it up but also to shorten it in any way you want. You just omit literaly any paragraph and the reader is still able to grasp the story. Also, using this format the story can be extended anytime without restructuring the text.

But yeah, I agree it is not enjoyable to read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> They killed a politician's 10 year old child with a badly designed water slide. If it hadn't been a elected official, they'd probably still be operating.

<comment><USER44> I doubt that. I live in Kansas City and the public shock was pretty much immediate - even before it was reported who it was. There's no way that ride was staying open.

Also, the park is still operating just not that ride.</comment></comment>


Social Media: An Apology - <AUTHOR> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-elders-social-media-apology/?include_text=1 <comment><USER2> > In retrospect, we should have known; USENET was a pretty clear warning.

100% true.

Another good data point is John Gabriel's Great Internet Fuckwad Theory: [https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19](https://www.penny- arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19)

That was written 14 years ago, effectively before modern social media. This problem has been a long time coming. The problem isn't that we couldn't know. It's that people kept thinking it would magically be different this time.

<comment><USER3> > It's that people kept thinking it would magically be different this time.

I don't think that's the problem, rather it's that the overwhelming majority of people currently on the internet are completely unaware there was a 'last time'.

<comment><USER2> I don't think the people who created Usenet were entirely unaware of human social dynamics. And the people who created things like Twitter certainly weren't unaware that Usenet, mailing lists, and web forums existed.

But at best, they had an incredibly rosy view of what was going on. E.g., looking back, a Twitter founder claims that in 2006 everyone "was cool": [https://twitter.com/rasmus_kleis/status/974552443789836288](https://twitter.com/rasmus_kleis/status/974552443789836288)

Given Gabriel's theory, that's obvious bunk. And having talked to some online community pioneers, abuse started pretty much from the get go. Look at all the replies I got when I brought it up on Twitter, for example. Story after story of early experiences of trolling, abuse, etc: [https://twitter.com/williampietri/status/974847531317211136](https://twitter.com/williampietri/status/974847531317211136)

There was (and is) a strong strain of technoutopianism, where we take the shiny new possibility and project a perfect future onto it. This goes back at least as far as the introduction of the telegraph, which many thought would bring about world peace: [https://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet- Remarkable-Ninetee...](https://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet-Remarkable- Nineteenth-line/dp/162040592X)

As Neiwart documents, though, many of the terrible people online today are intellectual descendants of the terrible people who were doing their social networking in person and via the mail: [https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America- Rise-Radical-Right-Trump/...](https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America-Rise-Radical- Right-Trump/dp/1786634236)

<comment><USER4> Please don't take offence but honestly I think the "uncoolness" is being demonstrated by you in these twitter threads and is an example of behavior that came about post-social media.

You and Rasmus twist Ev's words to somehow be about oppression instead of what he clearly meant: the early internet was inhabited by geeks and he (a geek) liked that. It's also clear that he's talking more about spammers than abusers. Of course with scale both will ramp up.

Secondly we see the presentation of a hard left view as the _only_ valid way of thinking. Pro-gun people showing up to a forum about gun control is in no way abuse, it's the internet fulfilling its promise of giving everyone a voice (even if you don't agree with them).

Yes, there have always been trolls, spammers, jerks, loudmouths... What social media seems to have created is a unique culture of grievance hunting, virtue signalling and a worship of victimhood.

Again, please don't take this as a personal attack, it's just an observation from someone who's been on the internet for a really long time.

<comment><USER2> If I am "uncool" in your eyes, I promise I was this way before social media. I've been using the Internet since the late 1980s, and before that was a BBS user.

I also think I'm reading Ev just fine. He says "We laid down fundamental architectures that had assumptions that didn't account for bad behavior." As one of Twitter's first users and a former Twitter employee, I think he's right. But when Twitter started in 2006, people had been behaving badly on the Internet for a long time, and it was far from being a "just nerds" place. The September that Never Ended started _13 years_ before Twitter, for example.

I also don't believe that my view is "hard left". I'm a gun owner, and am fine with people talking about guns. You're distorting what I said, which is that "rabid pro-gun types turned up to aggressively dominate and/or ruin the [gun control] forum". We were talking about abuse, and this was given as an example of clear forum abuse. Yes, gun owners can participate usefully in gun control forums, but being pro-gun does mean you can't be abusive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Note:

        2.4.  Whisky
              For those unable to leave social media or otherwise curtail their use.

With the caveat that while imbibing Whisky (or Whiskey, if you prefer) social media SHOULD be configured as a read-only medium.

<comment><USER6> I think it's more effective if it's still read-write but the output is redirected to /dev/null.

<comment><USER5> I'd dispute with you, but I'm drinking Whisky!

</comment></comment></comment><comment> IGI-111 I know this is a joke (although only partly), but blocklists are honestly part of the problem.

People got to this ridiculous level of childlike annoyance at the mere existence of dissent through group effects alone, but compounding it by literally removing any form of conflict seems like the worst solution possible.

The solution to people acting terribly on the public square shouldn't be to remove it.

<comment><USER7> There is a fair bit of scholarship that says this is incorrect. Most commonly, people cute the paradox of tolerance as a starting point[1], but there's lots more.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance)

<comment><USER8> I don't think he's invoking that. That we must be tolerant of intolerance lest we become intolerant ourselves.

I think he's saying that that the ease of which we can cut out any information that challenges our beliefs does more harm than good.

I'm sure you're a fine, upstanding, rational person who will always consider every viewpoint and come to a reasoned conclusion based on the facts every time and won't let emotions dictate any part of your decision.

However, not everyone is so disciplined. Don't consider the rational actor. Consider the irrational. Consider the flat-earther who can personally silence any sources that provide evidence to the contrary. Just stuck in their little bubble of misinformation. Then when something does sneak through their filter, they'll regard it as the anomaly because everything else they see confirms what they already know.

Now, there is some benefit to being able to silence certain opinions. I for one don't need flat-earthers constantly pushing their narrative that flies in the face of facts. But, then again, they feel the same way. I believe I've considered their evidence and their viewpoint fairly and have come to a conclusion rationally. But so do they. I believe I'm right, I'm fairly certain of it. But so are they.

It comes down to believing that personal abuse should be silenced. If I'm just blatantly attacking you or you're attacking me with no other goal but to be insulting, then being able to block each other seems fine. But to be able to silence information just because you disagree with it seems a bit more dodgy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mewse-hn The elders of the internet use a hotmail address??

<comment><USER9> That's how old they are. :)

<comment><USER10> Hotmail was mid 90s. What did they use for the ~20 years prior to that?

<comment><USER11> bang!paths!to!uucp!servers

<comment><USER12> In the late 1980s, I was the _first_ person in my company to seek to add my email address to my business cards. I still have some of those business cards with the old bang-style address format.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Origin of the "Elders of the Internet" term, for the uninitiated: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg)

</comment><comment><USER14> "Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community"

Umberto Eco

</comment><comment><USER15> _> The Edlers of the Internet note with sorrow the passing of our former member, Stephen Hawking, aka "The Hawk." You will be missed._

Apparently the Elders of the Internet are too old to know about spell-check :-D

<comment><USER16> No, the Internet was founded in Austria-Hungary.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It was really easy to be an egalitarian before social media caught on in a big way... Now more and more elections are going the way of populism and truth has taken a back seat.

I currently try to employ mitigation methods 2.3 and 2.4. If you slip on 2.3 you can generally compensate by leaning more heavily on 2.4.

<comment><USER18> That's funny my flow is in the opposite direction: I use method 2.4 (responsibly and without abuse, and with a different goal in mind) first, which leads to apathy of social media, which results in naturally applying method 2.3. I guess we both reach our intended goals, so it speaks to the effectiveness of the methods! ;-)

</comment></comment><comment> FLUX-YOU There's not really much you can respond with, so I'm just gonna type some words so I'm not just leaving a one word post on HN:

"Okay"</comment>