Review my start-up: Make your Girlfriend Happy (Valentine's coming up) - <AUTHOR>

http://www.makeyourgirlfriendhappy.com<p>I put this as a comment because it is a resubmission from a few months ago (a lot has changed!). <comment><USER2> Two quick notes:

* The start page is a bit too busy. And the red _really_ clashes with the FB connect button

* Yes, I know guys would like us to run around wearing low-cut dresses all the time - but do you really think a lot of women are going to respond to that image & "Ladies, click here"?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.makeyourgirlfriendhappy.com></comment>


Climate change and nutrient pollution are depleting oxygen from oceans: study - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50690995 <comment><USER2> Boy are characterizations like this getting tired. An actually accurate title would read something like: _Farm and industry run-off in certain areas of the world is depleting oxygen in certain parts of the ocean._

The vast majority of the issue isn't related to rising temps, it would still be there if there were no rising temps. It is the agricultural and industrial runoff in what I suspect are very, very specific parts of the ocean. The title "as temperatures rise" is totally dishonest. It's probably closer to something like "as demand for palm oil increases" (not trying to finger that one crop, but its more accurate than "as temperatures rise").

> "To stop the worrying expansion of oxygen-poor areas, we need to decisively > curb greenhouse gas emissions as well as nutrient pollution from agriculture > and other sources."

If you want to do something decisive, point out where these oxygen depleted areas are, and do something to stop the runoff. That's the main problem. Tying it in to the much more nebulous "carbon emissions" hurts more than it helps but its like climate writers cannot help themselves.

Imagine if everyone trying to stop the ozone-depletion problem did this. Nothing would have gotten done to this day. Find the smallest unit of actionable, measurable change and try to change that _first._

EDIT hokay lets read the study:

BBC: "Around 700 ocean sites are now suffering from low oxygen, compared with 45 in the 1960s."

Section 2.5 summary on page 109 (PDF) or page 85 of the report, two bullets:

• Over 900 areas around the world have been identified as experiencing the effects of eutrophication. Of these, over 700 have problems with hypoxia, but through nutrient and organic loading management about 70 (10%) of them can now be classified as recovering.

• There is no other environmental variable of such ecological importance to coastal ecosystems that has changed so drastically in such a short period of time as a result of human activities as dissolved oxygen.

Look, the part BBC wants to spook you with? It's eutrophication! It is independent of warming and can be fixed independent of warming. This is a good thing! It is already being fixed in some areas, which is even nicer. All I ask is that we actually decouple these from "warming" so we can do something about them faster.

<comment><USER3> Honestly, sensational headlines like this are why so many people have a difficult time buying into climate change. If the media would present it as it actually is then I think more people would get on board.

<comment><USER4> That is the problem. Without actual proof of something, sensational headlines are mandatory.

<comment><USER5> No the problem is that the evidence is boring and people have a hard time understanding how abstract numbers will affect their daily lives.

<comment><USER4> I agree, this is true. In this particular case though, there has been sensationalism for decades now - it tends to have the opposite of the intended effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One of the best ideas I've run across to fight this (aside from stopping the sources of the problem) is vertical ocean farming. You grow kelp on cables hanging vertically in the water column, interspersed with mussels, oysters and scallops. The kelp feeds on the nitrogen and phosphorus runoff and release oxygen and the bivalves filter the water.

The small scale work done so far shows the water gets cleaner and local fish population increases. Kelp grows incredibly quickly and it can be eaten by humans and animals or used as fertilizer. The farming can be done by experienced watermen who probably have suitable boats but are underemployed due to fishing restrictions.

[https://www.greenwave.org/](https://www.greenwave.org/)

[https://ideas.ted.com/vertical-ocean-farms-that-can-feed- us-...](https://ideas.ted.com/vertical-ocean-farms-that-can-feed-us-and-help- our-seas/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Cannot fathom why articles like this fail to link to the original source report. Here it is:

[https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documen...](https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documents/2019-048-En.pdf)

In particular, I wanted to see what new contributions this report was making in measurement of ocean oxygen concentrations. Section 2.1 appears to be the place this is covered, but all I see is a review of previous work by others.

The report is extraordinarily vague about what exactly were the experiments the authors did (if any). It's not structured like a research paper and reads instead like a very long executive summary. I expected to find a detailed analysis of how O2 measurements were conducted, and the possible limitations of the techniques, but there was none.

<comment><USER8> Articles about scientific papers should be required to link right at the top. Oftentimes all the hyperlinks are to other articles by the same journalist or publisher. It's insanity. A firefox plugin that somehow finds the original source and pops it up would be incredible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd almost wish Governments would do more to fight climate change so we can stop talking about it.

Not only are we facing the end of civilisation as we know it, it's going to be a long ass grind to the end constantly discussing the climate crises in between dodging one catastrophe after the next and obsessing over it all.

I hardly remember life without talking about it, but I do remember it was nicer and more simple.

Will deniers get sick of denying soon so we can move on ?

<comment><USER10> > I'd almost wish Governments would do more to fight climate change

Stop wishing. Go do something about it.

<comment><USER9> What do you actually think I can do? I feel pretty helpless and confused right now about how much an individual can actually do and why so little is being done globally.

Current things I do / have done are:

\- Attend rallies occasionally.

\- Divested most of my money where applicable.

\- Invest in energy companies and tech.

\- I went vegetarian for 2 years. I do eat meat again now, but not a great deal and mostly fish and chicken when I do.

\- Have not owned a car for about 2 years, I cycle and use public transport.

\- Fly less than once a year currently. I live abroad so sometimes I do need to go home to visit family.

\- Buy essential things like clothes from companies who do things sustainably such as Patagonia. Don't really buy junk.

\- Buy a monthly subscription to Climeworks.

As an individual I can do my bit; But clearly there is a limited amount of things I can do. I can't force countries to stop burning coal for power generation for example, which let's be honest, is the real crux of the issue. When I catch public transport, it's usually backed by coal or diesel right now.

What I don't get is this coal love affair that politicians can't seem to get over. We have so much to lose from climate change, including economically, so why do people love it so? It seems to be somewhat of an addiction. There seems to be a kind of "strength in denying" that older people enjoy to see in politicians. I don't really understand it but if this attitude changes, can be changed we'd instantly start on the correct path.

I also don't understand why simple and more cheap counter measures aren't being implemented rapidly.For example, afforestation. Is this because it's an admission something is wrong so most Governments won't do that so there is no commitment in it?

What is the actual the blocker here really? Corruption? Ignorance? Lobbying? We need to identify it and address it very quickly if we all want to survive and have a decent quality of life. This is why I have compassion for deniers, they don't really understand or want to admit how bad their lives will be.

On a personal level, I'm between jobs now looking for new things. I'm optimistic about the transition to renewables happening. The renewable tech is moving so fast and becoming so cheap I can see more and more of the grid changing quickly, at least in the developed world (which isn't enough on it's own); However I'm a little surprised at how little is being done to remove existing Co2. This also needs to happen.

I'm really considering how I can change my career to work on direct air capture tech or renewables even though this is far from my where my expertise lie as I'm in software.

<comment><USER10> > I feel pretty helpless and confused

If it helps, you are not alone. I felt helpless and frustrated for a long time myself. One thing that gives me hope at the moment is Extinction Rebellion. I realise it's not for everyone but I believe they are the best chance we have right now.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for getting back to me. In what way does Extinction Rebellion give you hope?

<comment><USER10> I begin to think that mass civil resistance movement is the only way to achieve deep structural social change. And deep structural changes is what we need to avert climate change. Think about historical precedents. Women suffrage, civil rights, anti-war movement, gay rights. None of these changes were _initiated_ by the government. I also think XR is correct in saying that traditional methods of campaigning of the last 30 years have failed. It's time to try something new. Civil disobedience. A nice feature of these tactics is that you don't need the majority. Apparently it takes 3.5% of the population to take part in sustained active resistance to bring about radical change [0].

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We don't have to be surprised about some of these events, since they have been predicted in the scriptures, for now, for a long time (ice melting, storms, quakes, waves of the sea heaving themselves beyond their bounds, fires/smoke, all things in commotion, and other significant catastrophic events--not just the usual levels of them).

I greatly appreciate the science and am glad for progress in our efforts. But I think we are not competent to solve planet-wide issues when we have largely rejected the instructions given by the earth's Creator (like, honesty, the Golden Rule, etc, etc): we have a hard time trusting each other even when we say we agree. I'm glad we can share our own thoughts. We need His help both to address important issues globally, and in our personal lives.

And importantly, we can be OK. Related, more detailed thoughts at [http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html](http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html) , a simple site w/ no javascript or sales).

</comment><comment><USER12> If this were a simple result of rising ocean temperatures on a global scale, wouldn't we expect oxygen levels in the atmosphere to increase? That doesn't seem to be happening (quite the opposite.) So, where is the oxygen?

<comment><USER13> There isn't a lot of oxygen in water to start with, as solubility is low. If we somehow made the Earth's oceans completely oxygen-free, it wouldn't add noticeably to the amount of oxygen in the air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Neoliberal economics — or really any economic theory — is not going to prevent an apocalypse.

<comment><USER15> Nope they can't price this in; and would look and whistle the other way if they had too.

<comment><USER16> Do you want a climate change dictator?

<comment><USER15> Dictator? I simply said the market/and economists can't price in damage to our environment and won't. If you feel any regulation on a corporation is being a dictator than maybe the answer is yes in your context. We've had to dictate the direction many times in the past when industry has become to exploitative of either labor or resources.

<comment><USER17> The market certainly can be regulated in such a way as to effectively price in the costs.

If we can have companies following constructs such as Sarbanes-Oxley then they can most certainly follow the constraints of environmental constructs.

Unless you mean that certain vested interests will bankroll politicians to cut regulation? Then yes, that is a very big problems (see: Koch industries buying their way out of environmental legislation) but not insurmountable.

<comment><USER16> So I don't have the answer here. I do like Jay Inslee's argument for simply making mandates to cut emissions and carbon usage. Ie mandating ever increasingly efficient fuel ratings on vehicles. He says that's an easier policy change than forcing costs on people through laws or created markets that can be undone in a following cycle.

It's all got to be on the table and considered though. The entire energy footprint of almost all of the industrial revolution through to current needs to be undone in some way. There's an inherent requirement on the energy that must be expended in order to do that, by the laws of thermodynamics/physics.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IPhone 3Gs 3.1.3 Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/2009/03/24/install-iphone-apps-jailbreak-required/ Check this out <comment><USER2> err. Story is from a year ago. ripdev.com looks to have closed in October of last year.</comment>


Silicon Valley would be wise to follow China's lead - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/42daca9e-facc-11e7-9bfc-052cbba03425 <comment><USER2> Absolutely brutal. First were the Japanese and now the Chinese with that kind of insane work environment. Nothing interesting or creative will comes out of it, just copycats of US companies.

<comment><USER3> Completely concur that the work environment is brutal. It's unsustainable to say the least, and for FT to advice SV to "follow" this is insanity.

I completely disagree with the whole "copycat" claim though. One needs to travel to China to understand this better.</comment></comment>


No politics please, we're hackers, too busy to improve the world - <AUTHOR> https://jacquesmattheij.com/no-politics-please-we-are-hackers-busy-improving-the-world <comment><USER5> Jacques M,

Presumably, you have read through the comments of the referenced thread[1]. If so, your essay omits a perspective about politics dicussion that many HN participants have. I'll attempt to summarize that position:

1) Yes, politics is extremely important.

2) Yes, politics _touches every subject_.

3) Yes, HN readers perform technical work in programming and hardware that affects politics, and vice versa.

4) All that said, the politics discussion on HN and similar sites is low quality, bad signal-to-noise ratio, full of _emotional_ comments instead of _insightful_ ones.

5) The overall _net effect_ of political discussion on HN is _negative_ and we'd rather not have 1 of the valuable 30 slots of the front page taken up by a political story (e.g. "Trump denies climate change.")

To reiterate the points above, it does not mean "climate change" is unimportant or that HN posters are _" burying their head in the sand"_. That's a 1-dimensional caricature of the people who'd rather get their diet of political discourse from somewhere else besides HN.

Therefore, it's possible to _simultaneously_ hold the view that politics is super important and they don't want it on HN. Your essay doesn't address this perspective.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404)

<comment><USER6> Maybe the quality of the political discussion is so crappy because we don't talk about it?

My experience is that one has to express their emotional relationship to problems and be aware of it before they can actually insightfully engage with problems; if people don't, they just introduce their emotional biases into their problem solving and pretend they're not.

<comment> aaron-lebo That works in personal therapy. If you expect people in a thread of hundreds of partisan comments to have some kind of catharsis, please see r/politics.

It's too complex of a topic and too emotional to be discussed in a large group setting.

<comment><USER7> You make a good point, but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion - <USER2> this is an area of open research - could we build UX for discussion forums that don't encourage and highlight shouting matches? I think the wide-open nature of twitter, for example, where everyone can immediately jump in on any conversation without context or consequences encourages such shouting matches and abusive comments.

There's a reason a one-on-one discussion is much likelier to at least be resolved in amicable disagreement and a greater understanding of perspectives, versus online "discussion" is often about vast hordes of people participating in one single "conversation" one comment at a time, while also trying to get upvotes.

I think it's quite possible to alleviate this, but requires getting over the simplistic per-comment upvote/everyone can comment on every thread model.

<comment><USER8> The primary reason for the immense difficulty is that casual political discussions are almost entirely wild speculation and conjecture. The topics are too vast and complex. Most people don't have the tools and understanding needed to have deep insights or meaningfully predict the actual impacts of different approaches. Throw in the emotional and tribal components, and it's not surprising that politics is a never-ceasing shitstorm.

This isn't true for every issue. Some things are relatively simple, like gay marriage for example. But the more obvious issues tend to get settled eventually, even if takes a few decades or centuries :)

It amazes me that I rarely see this discussed. Of course, I also fall in this bucket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You know how you have that hacker meetup, or small conference that starts off as all meaty tech topics? How great that feels to be able to learn/teach/demonstrate advanced topics knowing that everyone is on the same page. Then gradually money/business interests get involved to the point that the fundamental flavor of the group changes, and the first ones to leave are the most interesting. Five years later it's just a bunch of business/sales guys in suits giving power point presentations to each other. Of course no one would say that money, or business interests aren't important, but something has been lost here that is difficult to rebuild.

It's true that we should all consider the ethical ramifications of what we do, but opening the floodgates on politics _will_ have the cost of reducing the utility of HN. The most hyper specialized and interesting hackers are also the least likely to have time to waste arguing about the political battle of the day.

I miss Erlang day.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=512145)

<comment><USER10> After the Second World War, the part of the city the Technical University of Berlin was in came under British administration.

They quickly passed a decree mandating classes in philosophy, politics, languages, and other social sciences to be required for every student–engineers, physicist, chemists etc.

The idea was that never again should a generation grow up with the power of scientific knowledge but none of the tools to judge the ethics of using that power.

Meaning: there are times where enjoying purely the wonders of technology is a luxury you can't afford. For HN, it doesn't mean a need to debate the Paris accords. But this community has quite a few people sitting at the levers of power, and where technology and politics/policy intersect, it can make a meaningful difference for people to know that the group of peers whose judgement they may value would, for example, applaud them for walking off the job instead of handing over the iPhone encryption keys.

<comment><USER11> But I doubt they mixed politics lectures into the physics course.

Of course politics is important. Doesn't mean Hacker News is the best place for a high quality discussion of politics.

<comment><USER12> HN is emphatically NOT a physics course imho. It's a social space, not a forum for content from authority.

Maybe the thing we need is a mechanism to "dose" on sharing of political thought every so often, without allowed it to overwhelm: A day of the week or a megathread, where we can then engage with our community in political convo of substance...

<comment><USER13> > we can then engage with our community in political convo of substance

This is damned optimistic. It's not as though politics doesn't show up on HN, and when it does the results are usually unpleasant and uninformative. I'm not opposed to politics-on-HN because it's a formal space, I'm opposed because historically the results have been inflammatory and useless.

I suppose its possible that structured exposure would work better than 'natural' discussions arising from politics-related links, but I"d intuitively expect the opposite. "Political threads" with no clear prompt are especially easy to derail, and I'm scared that any major experiment with this would damage HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What makes HN so great is that when a topic is discussed, often someone with direct participation in the topic is somewhere in the thread, to give an inside view.

What I miss about mixing HN and politics, is that HN doesn't have politicians who can pop in and say 'oh hi guys I wrote this bill feel free to ask me some questions'.

(I'm not saying nobody on HN participates on politics, I remember reading an interesting post about someone who ran for governor(?), but those posts are rare).

For example, a podcast I love is Planet Money, and they take the time to interview economists on both sides, people who write some controversial bills, people who take part in lobbying, and even senators. This approach has really opened my eyes to the political process and I have heard many well formed counter arguments which made me reconsider some of my positions.

I cannot say I have ever experienced this on an online forum.

<comment> aaron-lebo That's a big issue. HN has no special insight on politics so the discussions turn into the same old canards and groupthink on Reddit or anywhere else. There's just very little informative or useful about those discussions.

It's pretty often that stuff which is factually wrong but meets emotional needs gets upvoted without a second thought. Disagreement with the notion the world is ending or Trump is literally James Harden and is gonna start the Holocaust (a popular feeling at HN 4 months ago) gets swiftly downvoted because it doesn't meet how people feel.

Every time one of those groupthinky discussions happens it makes HN less attractive to informed discussion.

I'm sitting at -12 in a thread from yesterday in which a guy responded "No offence you don't seem to have much knowledge of post ww2 history" after he was the one who made a weird historical analogy and I more or less copypastad part of a wiki article on the issue. I don't really care about being wrong or losing Internet points, but when stuff like that happens it just convinces me that even really intelligent people would rather agree with their biases over actually debating something. No thanks. It's the kind of behavior expected on r/politics.

<comment><USER15> I cant find the thread, but last year someone posted something close to 'all Trump supporters are idiots, I don't know how he got so popular,' and someone replied, 'I have a top uni degree, successful career and I am voting for Trump, so start with reassessing your assumptions about Trump supporters if you want to understand them,' and everyone just downvoted him. Nobody asked him anything.

For the record I'm not a Trump supporter, but I can see that when it comes to politics people think emotionally and ideologically, and very few are asking themselves "have I not made any mistakes?" in the same way we do (everyone does make mistakes) when we care about being proficient.

I studied economics and had a passion for public policy and realized how corrupt that all is. There's no moral excuse for anyone to still suffer in 2017--but it persists. People are irrational, greedy, and selfish. Not all, but enough.

<comment><USER16> As a counter-anecdote, about half a year ago a a self-described 'Alt Right Trump supporter' posted, and I posted a comment asking him about his beliefs, since I had only heard people hating on 'Alt Right' from my own sources, and was curious why he believed what the believed. You can see it here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12971897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12971897)

So not everyone here tries to silence alternate viewpoints, at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love how this article became an example exactly of what's wrong in politics in general. There is a huge group of people in every political unity, that doesn't care about general consensus, understanding problems, considering different points of view. Yet, these people tend to turn on their political flak cannons from time to time and march into the political landscape like elephants into a porcelain shop (thinking about a funny picture with Trump here).

Many IT guys are like this. They hope their desires are simply well known by everybody and the results ought to be handed to them. That there is a self- responsible process going on that desires not just the fulfillment of a single person's desire but group consensus is just outside their spectrum. They don't even see that it exists.

So instead of discussing about responsibility they decide to use the consesus finding methods like flagging a post to just shut down what is oncomfortable to them, no matter what the results for the group are.

I'm really confused about what could be done with these people. They have the highest amount of participation options anybody ever had on the planet. Yet they don't want to participate. They just want to get fed. And you can't just ignore them because they are so many.

<comment><USER18> I totally agree, but there are two things to note:

\- I think for many the "flag" button is in a grey area between downvote and an actual flag button. I am pretty sure many people use it as a downvote button with the original meaning of StackOverflow's downvote, so it might be _partially_ unintentional and with no ill intention.

\- HN should probably implement a downvote for stories, leaving the flag for truly abusive behaviour. Then implement their algorithm based on (Up/Downvotes radius) * (Total votes).

This would probably allow for conversations like this, polarized/controversial but still valid, to remain in HN.

<comment><USER19> My observation from other communities with downvote buttons is that they encourage more groupthink, not less.

With no downvote button, it's at least possible for a subcommunity to get a thread near the top for a while. Downvotes let the majority suppress these.

<comment><USER20> But what's worse, an actual downvote button, or not being able to stop people from using flag as one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Oh dear. I couldn't disagree more with the assessment of this story's position on Hacker News.

There is a difference between sticking your head in the sand politically and having a forum where people with differing political opinions can come together and discuss ideas in other areas than politics. You can both be politically active AND participate in a forum that avoids politics. Hacker News policy and avoidance of most political issues is precisely right in this regard. I know I come here to listen to stories dealing with computer technology and expert/practitioner commentary on those stories and business people engaged in the business of technology, particularly start-ups. At those times public policy has direct bearing to these subjects, such as patent law or net neutrality, I do expect to see discussion here.

Some here have been saying this has to do with US/Paris Accords. I agree with those topics being purged from this forum. I mean, really! How many readers of Hacker News do you think are on the fence about this subject: probably not zero, but my money says pretty damn close. I would wager that most here not only have already formed opinions on the subject, but strongly held opinions on the subject. If that's the case what possible value is yet another place to shout how right you are and wrong the other guy is at the top of your lungs given the number of other venues for such virtue signaling? I doubt you move the needle in one direction or the other on such terms.

So, what can you possibly achieve by being political in all venues and discussion forums? I suppose you can further entrench the move to ideological purity in all endeavors, further degrade any ability to find common ground with people that don't otherwise agree with you, further degrade the political discourse, and achieve a flourishing sense of tribalism in a large, complex society.

Is politics important? Sure it is. But so is time and place.

<comment><USER22> I guess jacquesm would like to see a political discussion of the same high quality many technical topics are discussed here. But it won't work - <USER3> can't shove politics into a quality tech forum and expect quality politics to come out, simply because political discussions inherently invite low quality. They're rarely about facts, mostly about status and opinions.

Hence, I agree HN should keep limiting political discussions.

<comment><USER23> That too. There's no necessary connection between 'good at programming' and 'understands politics well'. Or being good at anything else a forum covers and knowing much about the politic world and current situation within.

I mean, you wouldn't necessarily expect a site populated by mathematicians interested in discussing what's going on in their field to give you a good political debate. Why would you expect it on Hacker News?

<comment><USER24> 1\. The author is saying, the outcome of an election dominate our lives in a negative way more than our positive contributions via technology. In fact, technology can and does in some cases increase the chances that people have a bad day (eg. tyrants crushing dissent via tracking).

2\. If we are serious about improving the world, we can't ignore these significant downsides/risks in the world that occur along the political/power dimension.

3\. You can do this a positive way. I like how Elon's tech has a (not so) subtle political/power dimension. For example, he does not believe that power should be concentrated in the few hand that figure out AI first, but rather diffused into the many (via OpenAI). Stallman did some impactful political hacking in the (corporate) software world via GPL.

4\. I think chatting about this can be helpful if only to remind us of what some of our elders have contributed in the past. Maybe we can alter the power dimensions to hack our way into a more free, humane and well-off future.

<comment><USER22> AD 1. I suppose it depends. From my POV, the outcome of any election that happened during my lifetime in my country had close to zero impact on my life. But maybe I'm just fortunate. Or maybe the talking heads change, but the general direction stays mostly the same way anyway. Honestly not sure about that.

AD 2. People here are not ignoring them. The issue is about the difference between knowing about important changes, downsides and risks, vs. discussing every trivia of political sphere. A lot of the things said out loud don't mean anything, but they still invite outrage and flamewars.

AD 3. This is my personal outlook. Technology is more powerful than politics because it can unilaterally shift the playing field. If you talk Elon Musk, skip the OpenAI. Think Tesla, and how it basically forced the hand of all the other carmakers. It fought hard to make EVs a viable product, very much _against_ the market.

AD 4. See my comment to 2.

<comment><USER24> > AD 1. I suppose it depends. From my POV, the outcome of any election that > happened during my lifetime in my country had close to zero impact on my > life.

From a tech perspective, the dismantling of net neutrality came pretty fast after this last election. More generally, If you're gay or smoke pot, then you've felt the foot lifted off your face recently. Also, if you're in the insurance market, you have some protections (for now) against preexisting conditions. These last few aren't tech specific, but I just wanted to illustrate important change as the result of an election.

> AD 2. People here are not ignoring them.

That's good because I believe we should have some non-zero amount of political consideration/discourse. Not too much, but some.

> AD 3. This is my personal outlook. Technology is more powerful than > politics...

I tend to agree. In 1. there should be a 'can' in the sentence, because politics CAN ruin your day if you don't respect it. If we took a blase approach to seatbelts, it might work out fine for a while, but that doesn't mean it's something to be done. I believe casual conversations about politics early on can prevent a shouting match later.

Tech is wonderful, but I believe we should guide it towards broadly empowering uses if we are to meet the goal of improving lives. For example, building companies like Tesla where there are few imaginable ways that the outcome could be negative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Right. But are you comfortable with the fact that not all hackers will be on the same political side?

I wouldn't go as far as voting for Trump, but I am one of those crazy ultra- libertarians you occasionally encounter (I support tax cuts AND free migration). There are some well-educated people, even some with PhDs, who actually _did_ vote for Trump (I know a few), and most certainly, there are many Trump supporters right here on HN. Will you be comfortable with that, enabling political discourse?

Everyone wants to change the world, but not everyone is sharing your direction of change.

<comment><USER18> On the other side I do like discussing _topics_ with people with opposite ideologies. Some of the most interesting discussions I've had started with something like "Imagine that machines continue automating jobs and in the future there is only 10-20% of jobs today. What would you do with the rest of the people?".

Edit: I normally take the opposing side of the person that gives the argument just to explore the topic in-depth, so probably people from the left thing that I'm from the right and the reverse as well.

<comment><USER26> The one problem I see with most people discussing things with "the other side" is that they don't genuinely care, nor would be ever swayed by what the other person says. It's just a game of "gotcha" most of the time and thus unproductive.

Some people are so anti-Republican or anti-Democrat that you might as well be trying to convince a Jihadi to eat bacon or a Catholic to abort a pregnancy or a Baptist to star in gay porn -- or a Mormon to play blackjack -- or an Atheist to become a Buddhist monk. Online forums (and newspaper comment sections) have created such a political balkanization as to make participating nothing more than sadomasochistic entertainment.

I used to care about those sorts of discussions with the "other side," but I've found that the level of discourse has devolved into to some variation of "Trump wants to send people to the gas chambers and destroy the planet" or "Hillary hires hitmen and Bill took a payoff from the Russians." Or, often it's "America is horrible and should be boycotted" \-- or some other hyperbolic rant based on an anecdotal news item about a brown person at an airport.

I've got no use for it. I vote, encourage my like minded friends to vote and that's about it. Occasionally, I'll get sucked into a political discussion on Hacker News, but pretty much instantly regret it. I'm ok with the "crowd" disagreeing with my politics -- but I definitely don't relish getting into intense political debates with people here that I'd probably like to call my friends in real life.

Maybe it's my age (I just turned 40,) but I feel like engaging with deep economics and political discussions with those under 25 to be bordering on pointless. There are exceptions obviously, but when a 19 year old college sophomore wants to tell me about business unit economics, tax policy or building permits -- I'm pretty closed minded simply because they're generally citing other people's ideas rather than ideas based on actual experience or original thought grounded in experience. But that's ok. Views change as we begin to see the world for what it is rather than as what we want it to be. Everyone has the right to be wrong -- even me, as rare as that is. ;)

I'll leave you with a quote that is attributed to many people but this version came from Anselme Batbie, a 19th century French politician..

Celui qui n'est pas républicain à vingt ans fait douter de la générosité de son âme; mais celui qui, après trente ans, persévère, fait douter de la rectitude de son esprit.

<comment><USER18> That is exactly why I only have these kind of discussions face to face and with people I trust. More than trust, maybe I'd say I'm comfortable with. Anonymity is great for some things but not for having a conversation about politics.

And my reason to talk about these topics is to learn and understand them better! Many times the other person might not have a formed opinion (so we both "learn" or at least share what we know), the person knows about the topic (I learn) or that person has a one-sided view of the topic and just wants to play politics (run!). Always with a super-skeptic point of view of course, so my learning is NOT what they are explaining/teaching but still related to it. And after talking about it we can accept we have different points of view and still being friends.

I don't feel identified in your extreme examples so I'll put one of my own. I'm a strong atheist but I'm probably quite knowledgeable about several religions after years reading. First (when I was a teenager) I was kind of what you describe, trying to find flaws and argue about it. Then I started to ask myself, "wait why so many people believe?" which also led into being interested in psychology.

Now I have a quite decent picture about Japanese and east Asian cultures and religions and Spanish and Western ones. This allows me to understand why there's basically no vegans in Asia, why they overwork so much, family and relationships, etc. In turn this allows me to have more meaningful conversations and keep broadening what I know. The opposite would be those people who go to Japan and stick their chopstick in their meat (;

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am a lobbyist and I work in Washington, so I'm surrounded by politics every day. I think what makes HN great is that it avoids politics, for the most part, and true intellectual stories and debate is able to take place. Politics is extremely polarized, and permeates every aspect of our society to the point of extreme. I prefer an HN sans politics, without incendiary articles and commentary, because I learn a lot more about the world and society that way.

<comment><USER28> One of the more interesting lines of political inquiry that I think has arisen lately _outside_ of HN, is the question of the actual true affect "hacking" (and I don't just mean in the Security sense -- I mean in the Hacker News "Comp Sci" sense as well) actually had on recent elections around the world. In what way, _technically speaking_ and regardless of your personal political affiliations or beliefs, could US and other electoral processes (and let's just say government in general) have been directly affected by technical means? Maybe there are some good links to technical resources that others could direct me to?

I think the rest of the world desperately needs the Hacker News viewpoint on this, in detailed, non-partisan technical manner. I believe there is some deeper, non-polarized, apolitical (think, "highest bidder") aspect to what is actually happening right now around the world.

<comment><USER20> Well in the interest of discussing that, I do have some thoughts:

>could US and other electoral processes (and let's just say government in general) have been directly affected by technical means

One could claim that an intrinsic variable in democracy is the "voice" of any one citizen. For lots of years that has stayed stable. If a politically minded individual wanted to affect change, they could only "shout" so loudly.

They could spend day and night lobbying, petitioning, speaking, getting elected, but all that effort is only a constant multiplier. Technology in politics, just like in other areas, can move the needle orders of magnitude more effectively. When any one person or organization can use technology to add voices (apps, hacks, robots, etc), it can exacerbate issues and cause secondary effects that weren't present when 1 person = 1 voice.

<comment><USER27> That's a very astute point and speaks to the concept of grassroots advocacy (my specialty) and multiplying one voice into many on an issue. A problem arises, however, in that increasing voice through technology for political means is in a constant battle with government systems designed to minimize that voice. Like spammers versus spam filters.

For example: When I worked in a congressional office back in 2005 we used a system called IQ to log, process, and respond to all of our mail. Emails that came in that were the same were reduced to a single message. We never saw the 4,000 individual emails, only one with a counter. The system then would parse that out and show us how many were actually in our congressional district. Often it was between 1 and 2 percent. Thus we had the option to ignore that issue because it was only 1-2% of those who "mattered".

Newer systems do this so much better, and really block out those apps and the technology. The spam filters are incredible. So now the tactic is to go hyper local, recruit local, and use a lobbyist to leverage those local numbers. "Hi I'm a lobbyist, and on behalf of 300 of your constituents and eleven companies in your district, I'm here to talk about something important...."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The irony in this entire thread is that sufficiently broad technical leadership is indistinguishable from organizational politics. It's all about talking stakeholders into doing "the right thing".

I would _love_ to just be able to solve Big Problems by hacking on them, but the more experience I get, the more I find that the biggest roadblocks involve changing minds, not changing code.

<comment><USER30> Is organizational politics inevitable once you reach a certain size? Any ideas or lessons in avoiding politics in favor of solving problems – short of a mind meld?

<comment><USER22> The less people are there in a group and the less formal the area, the less organizational politics. The more difficult the problem, the more people you need to tackle it. Problems are made simpler by better tools (and smarter people).

Idea: make more tools reducing complex problems to something tractable by small groups of people. Couple that with freedom of association and let people self-organize.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> TL;DR: I think the appropriate thing to do is talking about _ETHICS_ here as that's universal and some times it will involve politics, but not just politics for the sake of it.

From an opposite point of view to this article, politics vary greatly around the world and I'm guessing that by _politics_ the article mainly refers to USA politics. For instance I ignore my country's politics talk since it's too old fashion and USA politics talk since it feels quite pointless arguing/bashing for the sake of it most of the times. I do enjoy a meaningful politics discussion from time to time, normally in person and with someone I trust already.

While I do agree on the big picture--USA is one of the most influential countries, politics there affect all the world--this article seems to be setting the prerogative to get into everyday politics. I do not really care whether or not Hillary or Trump were talking about their cat on Twitter (metaphor) during the elections and for many months after it and it became quite unbearable at points TBH.

So I would say that the things we should continue doing is talking about _ethics_ (especially when it is related with hacker ethics). My short list of rules for HN topics are (the more the better):

\- It is about hackers/startup/programmers/IT/privacy/etc.

\- It is interesting for a global audience.

\- It is something new or happening right now.

\- It is noteworthy or at least interesting/geek.

<comment><USER17> Your comment is political. It adds a point of view to the discussion about politics in HN. It also tries to achieve something (talking about ETHICS). This is politics. No need to talk how US government politics is different from Russian government politics. We can just talk about our politics here.

<comment><USER22> If you take such a broad definition of "politics", then the word becomes meaningless, since everything is "politics".

'jacquesm wrote about politics as in what politicians in the governments do. This is a particular thing, and I personally believe it's rarely useful to discuss it on HN.

<comment><USER17> No, eating a cake is not politics. Buying a cake may be though.

How would you call this thing that is there when multiple people interact with each other?

PS: This interpretation of the word "politics" isn't mine. I try to bring you closer to what the author is talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> From my point of view, discussing politics is a waste of time. We don't make progress by discussing the daily musings of the people who appear to wield power in the world.

I'm more interested in the technology that will eventually render their power useless: counter economics.

For me the goal isn't to find the right people at the right time to seat the power of nation-states, but to make it impossible for them to wield any meaningful power at all.

I am deeply interested in politics, governance, and the way humans interact at scale, but that doesn't mean I'm interested in what bills get passed, who gets elected, or what Trump said in a tweet. While these small blips in history do have an impact, I think technologies such as bitcoin, uber, etc., have a much bigger impact on the world because they usurp political power.

</comment><comment><USER32> Lets all waste time virtue-signalling about things we have no experience or expertise in, that are dominated by charismatic dummies we can barely communicate with, and that we'll have no measurable impact on!

Or we can keep doing what we can do well and has actually, fundamentally changed the world for the better and made us rich.

<comment><USER33> Well, if you negate what "politics" mean and conflate it with the current politicians star-system, your reasoning holds.

Although I can raise doubts whether it has made the world better, it certainly has made many people rich, at the expense of others. What you said is very political, ironically.

<comment><USER32> Very solid points, totally agree.

<comment><USER33> That being said, I'm not sure about how discussing politics on HN would go. While I think it's essential to assess the political implications of any project, especially in CS where things go global real fast, it will be difficult (although interesting) to have meaningful interactions between people of wildly different viewpoints and axioms when decrypting reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm not sure if I agree with the author. Hackers do care about political issues. My question is whether political discussions over short form text do more harm than good to a community. To me, HN detoxing politics seems more like the librarian enforcing a rule of silence rather than encouraging ostriching. And polarizing topics like politics, especially over short form text, to me, seems like it would destroy that ideal of HN.

That being said, the Internet sure could use a proper forum for political discussions.

<comment><USER35> Why is the post flaggeg, then?

<comment><USER22> Because enough HN users clicked the "flag" link, most likely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't think one must devote themselves to politics. However, this thoughtful essay by regular contributor here should be UNFLAGGED. It is piercing, but measured and in line with the ideals here on this site AND the reasonable discussion.

If dang or another moderator could weigh in; this is not how I believed flags were meant to be used. We defend free speech here unless we have a strong reason.

<comment><USER37> It's tedious bullshit that makes a bunch of mistakes - some of which have already debunked.

In particular it mostakes the reason for the detox. This was only ever about stopping tedious pathological arseholes making the same boring hyperbolic bullshit flamebait arguments that a not particulary bright 16 year old would make.

HN thinks of itself as smart but the political discussion here is normally embarrassingly weak.

<comment><USER36> > mostakes

> Not particularly bright 16 y/o

I found his write up of the custom Lego sorter hardware design he made to be innovative. With a treadmill and some spare parts he made a classifier and trained a neural net.

Either way; I think your comment is rude. If you don't like his piece-- which again I am not sure I agree with either; use <hide> not flag.

<comment><USER22> The second thing you quote ("not particularly bright 16 y/o") isn't about the piece, but about the type of content that happens and what HN political detox was meant to limit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> <personalOpinion> The problem with political or religious discussion is that much of it is irrationally about 'tribes' and self image.

Some positions cannot be easily influenced with mere 'facts' because you're arguing against people's feelings and cognitive dissonance is very powerful.

Bringing politics up on Hacker News will rarely positively influence anyone's opinion but will almost always be divisive and distracting. </personalOpinion>

<comment><USER29> Sometimes the goal isn't to "convert" people to your political or religious views. There is immense utility in reinforcing that there are intelligent and congenial people (who deserve the benefit of the doubt) that disagree with you on important issues.

I think pushing "controversial" discussions to the edges of polite society has been shown to make us more culturally ignorant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm sad the posts about USA withdrawing from the Paris deal all got purged fro the front page yesterday. Yes, some political issues aren't relevant on HN, but this I think was.

Edit: Kinda ironic that this post is now having the title [FLAGGED] and being dropped from the fp as well. Edit2: Still flagged but back up, interesting

<comment><USER40> No HN only allow political ideologies or narratives they agree with. The moderator team do not hide that they are SJW's.

As another example, currently HN's narrative of choice is how Uber is literally the worst thing since Hitler and you can't go a week without seeing 3 or 4 top-voted links bitching about Uber. Perhaps some people like being able to conveniently travel from point A to B without caring about what some whiny keyboard warrior hates about Uber this week.

<comment><USER41> What's an SJW?

Not playing dumb, just interested in what it personally means to someone who applies it to others as a (pejorative?) label.

<comment><USER22> A Social Justice Warrior, though it's mostly used to refer to people who weaponize feminist ideology and use it to disturb peace in a community.

I don't know what SJW accusation has to do with Uber here, nor have I observed any particular SJW inclination within the mods. There's plenty of SJW action on HN, especially in threads about diversity in IT industry - but I'm yet to see a HN mod behaving that way.

<comment><USER42> I went and checked, and the OP seems to have been offended over this post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14358379](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14358379)

The OP posted "*he" as a "correction" for a "she" talking about Chelsea Manning, and seems to have been offended they got downvoted.

Apparently they may not be familiar with the difficulty of assigning gender. The least politically charged way to seeing this is to look at Olympic sports, and [https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/sex-testing- olympian...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/sex-testing-olympians) is a good overview.

I'd draw particular attention to the case of Ewa Klobukowska who was stripped of an Olympic Gold medal for "failing a chromosome test" (ie, exactly what the OP is claiming should be the arbitrator of gender).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Jos%C3%A9_Mart%C3%ADnez-...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Jos%C3%A9_Mart%C3%ADnez- Pati%C3%B1o) is another case.

Ewa Klobukowska later had a son, and had her medals returned.

<comment><USER22> Yeah. It was a surprise to me when I first discovered just how complex sex/gender is, in purely factual terms. I suppose over time society will have to develop sub-qualifications, because having just one binary category (man/woman) doesn't properly work at categorizing various aspects of a human being, like:

\- grouping by the way someone looks (influenced by hormones)

\- grouping by reproduction capability (can or can not be pregnant)

\- grouping by reproduction _hardware_

\- grouping by which group of partners one finds sexually interesting

\- grouping by various other aspects of biology (chromosomes and all)

Different areas in life really want to categorize by a different set of those aspects, and bundling it all under one word starts to become problematic. My programmer intuition tells me we need to become more explicit about which aspect we mean at any given moment.

<comment><USER42> And of course it gets even more complex when you consider how things like hormonal changes (either natural or unnatural) effect gender.

Also there seem to be other factors which aren't understood yet:

 _The researchers identified a region of the hypothalamus, known as the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc), as being responsible for sexual behaviour. This area is always larger in men than women. However, in their study of six MTF GID sufferers, a female‐sized BSTc was present in all subjects. Additionally, the size of the BSTc was not influenced by taking sex hormones in adulthood. This implies that these individuals had a powerful biological force compelling them to be female, rather than just a psychological conviction._

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2600127/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2600127/)

But.. I guess yelling "SJW" is much easier, or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm interested in politics, I follow it closely and I am a member of a political party. But I don't want to see it here, I don't think HN is a good venue for it.

<comment><USER44> That's a shame, because the things we discuss here have political consequences, and it's irresponsible to ignore them.

I wouldn't want to see posts strictly about politics on the front page, but I think discussion of political topics that relate to technology and our industry is not only interesting, but necessary.

<comment><USER43> It's not irresponsible to keep discussions in their right place, of course politics will seep in everywhere but if I want to talk about the US pulling out of the Paris agreement (and I do) then there are better places to do that than here.

<comment><USER29> The problem is "the right place" is always somewhere else.

<comment><USER45> "political discussion" gets 252,000,000 results on Google.

This simply isn't true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> One of the reasons I think that we hackers like to stay out of politics is we feel that politics itself, as a subject, is broken - and we can fix it by computerising everything.

This may or may not be true. In the meantime, computer programmers all over the world are working on computerising subjects that are traditionally used to having political power/influence involved. Pulling the humans out and replacing them with shell scripts, in this scenario, is of course a source of contention.

Fundamentally, governments and politics are broken. Computers can be used to fix them. However, this is one of the most controversial areas of computerisation and - like politics itself, along with governance - a cause of never-ending social strife.

Its almost like something, "ethical", is missing in the equation.

<comment><USER47> > One of the reasons I think that we hackers like to stay out of politics is > we feel that politics itself, as a subject, is broken - and we can fix it by > computerising everything.

I agree with the first part, but personally disagree with the second part.

Yes, I find politics broken, but I have absolutely no faith in fixing it in any way. So I hack away on problems I feel like I can solve or at least improve on. This keeps me sane.

<comment><USER22> Same here. I don't buy fixing politics with computers - not until we take politics _entirely away_ from humans and give it to a superpower AI that will act as a god.

The argument for this belief is this: people keep gaming stuff. No matter how smart your system is, given enough interest someone will hire someone smarter to cheat it. Even mathematics won't save you here, because math is too narrow- scoped. For any theoretically secure system on paper you can find holes in its messy real-life implementation. See e.g. quantum entanglement used to create untappable communication channels being defeated by simply tapping at the classical endpoints.

<comment><USER48> Right. There's no incentive to "fix politics" with computers from a business standpoint. If anything, there is plenty of incentive to _break_ politics from a business standpoint with computers.

A well known example: Target people with a particular political persuasion, make them mad or shocked with some bait headline, and get clicks. Basically the well known phenomenon of "clickbait", which is also implemented non- politically. As implemented in politics, such might reinforces "echo chambers" or epistemic closure. But they also made some people a fair bit of cash.

The same goes for what large social networks probably are already doing to keep everyone happy in a polarized environment: curate people's news feed to match their "political tribe". EG: the red feed blue feed concept reported on in the Wall Street Journal ([http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red- feed/](http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/)). Again, same concern: such may reinforce "echo chambers" or epistemic closure. But the alternative might be users quitting there social network = less ad dollars. So there is no incentive to promote balance.

Unfortunately, humans are very tribal creatures. To break away from this requires active resistance of what is a very human trait. I don't think hardly any human alive has done this completely.

So even in the "superpower AI god" case, probably another "tribe" would come along to make another "superpower AI god" with a completely different filter, and we'd be in the same place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> We're hackers, too busy helping extract wealth from the population as efficiently as possible.

<comment><USER50> You do know wealth can be _created_?

<comment><USER51> It can but the market is currently showing us this is far less profitable than collecting rents and Phishing for Phools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> There are two different types of politics and we often conflate both. The type that many people hate is "politics the art of manipulating people".

The second meaning refers to actual policies and their effect on people's quality of life. I don't think anyone would have trouble discussing that - that is, if it were somehow magically separated from the manipulation. But often its not.

If you look at the first meaning, things like "detox week" make a lot of sense - its about getting rid of the manipulation so that your brain can process information better again. "Squelching political debate" means stopping discussion that attempts to manipulate, and so on.

Since the tools used for manipulation are currently better than ever before, and we don't like manipulation, I suppose the best approach would be to work on things that expose manipulation and/or defend people from it.

edit: exercise - try to replace the word "politics" with "manipulation" in the article and re-read it. The point that we shouldn't burry our head in the sand still stands, but the reasons why that happens become much clearer.

<comment><USER53> Politics, from my Norwegian social studies textbook, is defined as "the subject of distributing the burdens and surpluses of society". Nothing to do with manipulation there. The same definition can be used for office politics.

Manipulation only enters into it when people use dishonest means to pull the surpluses over to themselves, and the burdens over to people who shouldn't carry them.

<comment><USER22> > _The same definition can be used for office politics._

> _Manipulation only enters into it when people use dishonest means to pull > the surpluses over to themselves, and the burdens over to people who shouldn > 't carry them._

... which is pretty much the _exact meaning_ of the term "office politics". You don't talk about "office politics" when people get rewarded appropriately for their contribution to the company. You only talk about it in the context of e.g. sucking up to managers, backstabbing cow-orkers, taking credit for something you didn't do, etc.

As for the government-type politics, "the subject of distributing the burdens and surpluses of society" is as good a definition as "the subject of distributing land and wealth of a society" is a good definition of war. It's _technically_ true, yet totally misses the important and problematic aspects of it.

Definitions are a way to draw a broad-stroked border in thingspace, so that you know the general area in which the meaning of a word lies. Nothing more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> \--A bit of a Rant---

I would argue that politics have infiltrated tech too much already.

Don't believe me, try being a open, vocal Trump supporter or conservative at a major tech company in Silicon valley. You will be labeled a hateful, racist (fill in your favorite derogatory term) based on your political beliefs irregardless of your actual actions both at work or even in your personal life. Most people who are conservative are afraid to talk about their political beliefs due to the very real threat of losing their job.

Look at Larry Garfield with Drupal. In the course of things stuff went as far as people in the Drupal association actively trying to ban conservatives among other things.

The ruby community is just as bad. Rails Girls, Rails Bridge and later on tech404.io banned a woman because she was conservative [https://code.likeagirl.io/thoughts-from-the- editor-172e93ecc...](https://code.likeagirl.io/thoughts-from-the- editor-172e93eccbb1). Then there was Opalgate where a community diversity leader tried to get a key contributor banned over his personal conservative beliefs.

At this years Lambdaconf a black, first time speaker and military veteran, who grew up dirt poor in the projects, but pulled himself up by his bootstraps was blasted by a group of people because in his personal life he believes in the red pill, specifically, in his own words seeking the truth, not being anti- woman.

As a moderate I really don't need to be concerned about someone's personal beliefs work with people or to even have a friendship with them. People are messy imperfect beings and there are many shades of grey with people and beliefs even when they hold views that I'm against. The only time that becomes an issue is if someone acts on it. IE: they steal from the company or murder someone etc. but that is not what I am talking about here. In all of the cases I mentioned here, these people did not act inappropriately in a professional setting. They didn't harass people, try to convince people about their personal beliefs, make sexist statements etc..

People who dedicate their lives to parsing out complex political/moral issues have a tough time doing it. If I go to a tech event I'm there to talk about tech not a political conference. The irony is that if people on all sides of the political issues have a place where they came come together and see someone as a human it also may be more effective than the division that the politicization of tech has been creating. Could that open us up to some bad, maybe, but politics being combined with tech are causing a lot of damage to the industry and people already. More importantly its not working. \---Rant over--

</comment><comment><USER55> We can argue all we want, but it is clear that in 2016, blocking one Twitter account could alter the course of history.

<comment><USER56> Yes or it could have the opposite effect. What I think is that a lot of people feel hated upon from the rest of the society.

In my country there is a political party that has been excluded from a lot of public things, other politicians telling them they are fascists, racists and just any kind of slur basically. They were even excluded from a party where Saudi Arabia was invited. Just think about that.

Now, they are the second largest party in the country and well on their way of being the largest. They had everything to gain being the underdogs and their opponents has been their best ad for gaining trust and votes.

<comment><USER55> Fascists are excluded from public discourse in many societies, and I'm not positive it makes the situation worse in any respect. People still supporting them no matter what are typically like-minded bigots rather than some sort of libertarians sticking up to authority.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Let's start with the techno-essentialism that many in the tech world depend on for their mental well being: Yes developers impact the world, no they do not impact them as much as TV (still), comedians and most other fields of science. Dumping movies, 0days, user databases online, developing some new prediction market with whatever cryptocurrency doesn't change that. Still, I completely agree one should be aware of the ethical implications in the code they write.

Relevant quotes from article:

> and that hackers, more than any other profession, create the tools and the > means with which vast changes in the political landscape are effected.

> The ability to influence with disproportional effect on the outcome of all > kinds of political affairs compared to someone not active in IT, the ability > to reach large numbers of people, the ability to pull on very long levers, > far longer than you'd normally be able to achieve

> Between 'Wikileaks' and 'Cambridge Analytica' it should be more than clear > by now

stop this. Go back and look over CA's marketing material. They brag about taking Ted Cruz from a field of 20+ into 3. Not exactly a winning pony. And I'm sure there were plenty of other analytic companies that would have used it to their marketing benifit if their pony got further instead. The "we predict you better than your mother with just 300 likes" is a line people already wanted to believe. Someone just made a good story for us to bite into it.

Still, I do agree "everything has a political dimension"

<comment><USER58> We are, right now, influencing each other through a filter. A filter designed by Paul Graham and friends with some values in mind. For instance, there is no picture of each other, no reference to sex, nor race. That prevents many prejudices from being activated. That is impact.

If actions speak louder than words, infrastructure, that which dictates which actions are possible at all, speaks much louder. Developers are building new infrastructure all the time, for every action and human need. Right now I can buy groceries online, get a remote job, and find a date on an app. That is techno-essentialism.

The future belongs to the hacker in much the same way that medieval Europe belonged to the knight and the bishop. The power of the computer is obvious to anyone that isn't living under a rock, naturally, this brings many fakers, if you focus on them it all seems like a bubble, because you _are_ focusing on the bubble. Treat yourself better and focus on what pervades. The Times They Are A-Changin'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Does it ever occur to people who want to introduce explicitly political conversation to a project, that a "lets focus on the task at hand" policy might be for their own good? That bringing the political dimension in might chase away contributors with whom their interests were temporarily aligned?

I can understand bringing up politics when the topic is something like deliberately using psychological manipulation against their users. Because if you think it's morally wrong, your interests were never even slightly aligned, and the goal is to be off-putting. Hopefully in a way that puts people off of what they're building, rather than putting them off of venues where you can converse with them.

But using that case as rhetorical cover for bikeshedding a minor slight that occurred in the context of an otherwise noncontroversial piece of software? That is why people hate "politics."

(I wish I had the link to where I saw this argument presented first, but I'll guess my poorly rephrased version will have to do.)

</comment><comment><USER60> Political discussion tends to be of a fundamentally different type vis-à-vis technical discussion. Discussion mechanics like voting and flagging (particularly apropos here) which work well for technical discussions are often...lacking...when it comes to political ones. This is _literally what much of the article is complaining about_.

If someone is pounding in nails with a screwdriver, I might suggest that they use a hammer instead. That doesn't mean that I think nails are beneath me.

</comment><comment><USER61> "The ability to influence with disproportional effect on the outcome of all kinds of political affairs compared to someone not active in IT, the ability to reach large numbers of people, the ability to pull on very long levers, far longer than you'd normally be able to achieve comes with some obligations."

If this is true, then "some obligations" would almost certainly include a reluctance to abuse those long levers or alienate a large swath of users. Power ought to be used responsibly.

Back to reality, though, the reason why hackers and other tech-minded folk are averse to politics is the exacy reason why they're hackers: because politics is about as far away from the hacker ethic as possible. It'd be like asking a racecar driver to take up an interest in gardening; yeah, some NASCAR drivers can probably grow one hell of a vegetable patch, but it ain't exactly something one could or should expect them to do.

Hackers would rather focus on being immune to politics. It should be no surprise, then, that they tend gravitate toward things like cryptocurrencies and other technologies resistant to governmental control (or providing a means for such resistance).

</comment><comment><USER62> Are you kidding me? It's not that I'm not political, but this isn't a place for doing anything with politics, it's for hacking and talking about that. Go away with this crap.

Politics is OK to get into but I skip over any comments that directly provoke flame wars. I don't flag articles but I sure did flag this. And I deleted a personal insult from that first part. What are you thinking??

</comment><comment><USER63> It's not that politics don't matter, it's that political discussions are not just useless - they're harmful.

Political discussions almost always become emotional, rather than intellectual, discussions. They work on the wrong part of the brain.

Virtually everyone takes absurd positions and then viciously attacks their fellow human beings who take a different absurd position.

</comment><comment><USER64> I never saw an article that was both flagged and still on the homepage...Didn't know that could happen. Badge of honour really.

<comment><USER17> I would guess moderator influence here. And it's reasonable to keep it on the front page, since it doesn't contain anything flag-worthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Explicitly talking about politics is exactly what everyone who doesn't have any access to long levers is doing. Using those levers to accomplish something doesn't necessarily look like "doing politics". It might instead look like writing the bitcoin whitepaper, or running some tor exit nodes, or just improving wikipedia.

</comment><comment><USER66> Politics divides us. The more we can do together whilst holding opposing world views the better.

If the left didn't excommunicate anyone they disagree with maybe there would be more a chance to have reasoned political discussions, but so far, anywhere online where there is a left-wing community, all opposing viewpoints are silenced. See Reddit, etc.

</comment><comment><USER67> I'm yet to see a political _discussion_ among people not dedicated to that or with no in-depth knowledge that actually accomplished[1] something. Several (hundreds) of posts/comments asserting opinions before dying out, or turning into a flamewar of insults, doesn't do much to change the world, as far as I see anyway.

With that in mind, I don't see the point of promoting even more (it's not as if there isn't plenty of it already) political talk in HN.

Is it important to be aware of political ramifications? Maybe, and that's why I _personally_ follow several general news publications in my RSS feeds and not only tech blogs. Is it important to _discuss_ it? Following what I said above, not, in my opinion.

[1]: Even among knowledgeable persons, most of the accomplishment is swaying people from one side to the other and that can be good or bad.

</comment><comment><USER68> In many people's view just being broadly aware of political situation around you is not enough anymore, they seem to believe that you need to have a strong emotions about (certain) political subjects, you need to take actions... even though for the most of time they don't do anything constructive about it either, except for venting off the frustrations on twitter or with friends over a beer. Which is perfectly OK, I do it all the time, but you need to be aware that some people just don't get that much emotionally involved in politics as you do. And that it's perfectly OK, because not taking active part in politics is also a form of politics. IMHO one should be free to choose his role in the society, without being forced into one or the other by peer pressure.

</comment><comment><USER69> I tend to think of politics as resource arbitration. Say, you have limited resources (as we all do) and there are too many contenders who want to settle this without resorting to any sort of violence, then you need pretty much politics.

Technically, a kernel scheduling algorithm or packet forwarding algorithm are politics too (hence they're called "policy"). The problem is that the real world is so messy and complex and has too many variables unlike CS stuff that we can hardly reach any sensible solution in a timely way. In theory we can tackle on politics in a somewhat objective manner but it's typically waay harder than any software project.

<comment><USER70> See the book: "Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making" by Deborah Stone for an exploration of this issue of resource arbitration and politics.

One simple example she uses is how do you divide up birthday cake? Equal pieces? What if come people arrive late to the party after you start cutting the cake and giving out pieces? What if some people are full but others have not had dinner yet? What if some people don't like the pieces with chocolate icing?

While we can be "objective" within a set of established priorities, we can't be objective about designing a set of priorities. Albert Einstein wrote on this in "Science and Religion" about how science can tell you about what is and how it is all connected, but it can't tell you what should be.

One other point Stone she makes is that when people are on the outside of an organization they want transparency of the decision making process -- while then the same exact people move to the inside of an organization they suddenly have many reasons why they want decision should be opaque. "Yes, Minister" has a great comedy episode on that called "Open Government".

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> The problem with politics and a great many other things is that talking about it is just talk. The vast majority of these problems are so outside the scope of any one's frame of reference and that creates two problems. Even the most educated of all people are only able to say "it's complicated" and most people only have opinions. It's glib to say that it will just turn into FB with everyone spouting their own un-educated opinions. But the reality is that unless you have actionable YES/NO type ideas, no one in the tech industry (or any other group) cares much about opinions other than their own.

</comment><comment><USER72> I think this title would be so much better without the ironic voice (or whatever the english term should be for saying one thing but meaning another).

Something like "All technologists should care about politics" is so much more meaningful.

<comment><USER73> "Sarcastic" would probably be the best fit. Good point also.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> two things, firstly don't confuse hackernews with hackers as a group.

secondly and the most important is that politics posts here usually devolve into flame wars, and people don't like that.

Finally this submission has already been flagged, I notice.

</comment><comment><USER75> There are two claims here that should be considered separately.

1\. Hackers are reluctant to acknowledge that their work has political ramifications. I believe this is true, and a problem.

2\. Politics should be discussed more on HN. This is what most in the comments are disagreeing with, and I think with good reason. I like that HN avoids politics for the most part, but I'm also very glad to see someone point out that too many intelligent and technologically-inclined people insulate themselves from taking questions of values seriously.

<comment><USER22> The topics of impact of tech on society, and of ethics in technology, are something that I too would like to see discussed more. Separated from politics as much as possible, per your point 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Even the Snowden leaks seemed not so important to me. Unless there is good oversight of who views what as long as there is due process, I don't see any reason to view those things as politically charged.

Honestly I prefer having a nihilist point of view about politics in general, having a minimum amount of trust towards separation of power, always weighing the pro and cons, trying to guess what public opinion wants. It's much more freeing to see voters as children expecting things.

Geopolitics are much more interesting honestly.

</comment><comment><USER77> The tools we create can be used for both good and evil. It's not my place to decide who can and can't use the tools I create and what they can use it for. Frankly, I simply don't care _at all_ about any kind of politics, which is why I got into programming in the first place.

And if the author doesn't like that, than that's just too bad for them.

<comment><USER78> > It's not my place to decide

You are still responsible though.

"It's not my place to decide who uses the torture devices I design. My job is only to make them as painful as possible."

<comment><USER79> I make kitchen knives. People use kitchen knives to kill each other. Am I now responsible for these deaths?

<comment><USER44> You're not responsible, perhaps, but you should think about it. Choosing an extreme example like kitchen knives is a bit disingenuous (hooray cherry- picking); there are plenty of things you could build that have positive, innocuous uses but also could be used for bad in a much less trivial way than a simple kitchen knife... and for some of those things, one might suggest that the builder _is_ responsible.

<comment><USER79> _> Choosing an extreme example like kitchen knives is a bit disingenuous_

I completely disagree, I think most of the things that we build as developers _are_ as innocuous as kitchen knives.

If you're building (for example) pen-testing software then I completely agree that you should be thinking about how this software might be used against others. But if you're building some software which helps run processes across multiple nodes then I don't think it's up to the developer to police how this software is used (What would they even do about it? You can't not write software like this just because it could be used for nefarious purposes.).

And I genuinely believe that 99% of us are writing software which is much more like the latter than the former.

<comment><USER78> A bit late for this thread, but, still, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb13ynu3Iac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb13ynu3Iac)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> c-smile Technology development does directly affect trajectory of where the humanity go as the whole. Yes.

But I think that HN shall be the place where we can discuss how AI moves us from post-industrial to post-human world for example rather than particular fluctuations of the trajectory (a.k.a. realpolitik).

</comment><comment><USER80> I'm pretty sure a lot of my favorite blogs on political subjects I discovered from reading hacker news, so im a bit skeptical of the premise. What I see get (mostly) rejected here is outright political activism -- but it doesn't seem like the place for that.

</comment><comment><USER81> Hacker News is a high quality forum _because_ it disallows political discussion.

Maybe someone could build a forum that enforces civil discussion on political issues, either with automated or manual moderation, but Hacker News' moderation isn't nearly strict enough.

<comment><USER82> > Hacker News is a high quality forum because it disallows political > discussion.

Hacker News does not disallow, and but for a brief experiment never has disallowed, political discussion. This non-existent ban does not, therefore, explain HN's quality.

<comment><USER81> By "disallow", I'm talking about the guidelines:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics ...

and most people's willingness to support these guidelines with downvotes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> happy-go-lucky > too busy to improve the world

I would say I'm just busy trying to improve the world.

</comment><comment><USER83> Politics is driving people away from the Google homepage.

</comment><comment><USER84> Hackers don't bother with politics because they understand that it's the people who change the world and not the politicians. Politicians' job is to get re-elected, everything else is irrelevant.

<comment><USER85> Politicians are people, they definitely are changing the world and affecting people's lives. If you care about your society, the world in general, then it is relevant.

<comment><USER22> I think the question isn't whether it's relevant, but whether it's an _efficient_ way of doing things.

<comment><USER44> Efficient or not, politics does change the world (both for the better and worse), so it'd be foolish not to at least pay attention.

<comment><USER22> True. The problem is - most of the political public sphere is just noise. To the point that e.g. following regular media sources is just a waste of time (and risks infecting the brain with lies).

Being efficiently engaged in local or global politics has little to do with discussing e.g. the latest media blunder of a politician, or whatever promise they made that probably won't happen anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> Coverage of political machinations is pointless, but information on political outcomes is invaluable - there is a massive difference. Chomsky has said the only paper that tells the truth is the Financial Times, in part because you don't make money with lies, whereas most news is designed to push an agenda and obfuscate anything real.

Understanding political outcomes is very different to listening to political debate/punditry/noise, and learning, for example, that certain subsidies are ending is not the same as reading political arguments on the environment, and they shouldn't be confused.

Knowing that Trump is president means one can predict certain things - <USER4> Paris accord ending - but not others, for example budgets are far less fungible than people think, and a lot of the budget of any nation is kinda locked in, so a lot of the noise on funding cuts and changes is unlikely to come to fruition. If you read a lot online/watch a lot, how do you know which of the multitude of BS will come to fruition?

I reckon if more news focussed on "this is the debate, these are the likely outcomes, these industries would be affected in these ways", then reading more would be invaluable. OTOH, Covfefe coverage? I'll Pass.

</comment><comment><USER87> You guys, what would be the crucial ingredient in "socdem" vs. "libdem" diff that makes you so angry when someone compares it to "angular" vs. "react" diff?

</comment><comment><USER88> You're downvoted _because_ you're exactly right. People on here generally can't handle inconvenient truths that include themselves. Never trust a person who can't rend their garments.

> This generation

No. Resoundingly NO! These smug clowns can't speak for anything and anyone. They're not even _a_ generation, just farts in the wind. Even just 1% of the people paying attention outweigh them easily, and at any rate, _the world belongs to those who genuinely care about it_. Period, anyone who disagrees can come fight me. Think less "no child left behind" and more "Noah's Ark"; they had their chance, they made their choice, let's not be held hostage by them. At the very least, let them queue after those who are not ungrateful.

<comment><USER22> > _Period, anyone who disagrees can come fight me._

Can I flag you? Yes? Oh, there's the link. I just flagged you.

You see, _this_ is why some of us want less politics on HN. Because every political topic inevitably turns into people doing the thing you're doing here - assuming that those who have different views than you are "smug clowns", instead of trying to figure out _why_ their views differ from yours.

<comment><USER89> > Can I flag you? Yes? Oh, there's the link. I just flagged you.

And you are holding speeches about tolerance??

How tolerant about different views are you? Or are you just misusing your power?

So much about the "tolerance of the self assigned tolerance watchers".

<comment><USER22> HN rules are: full tolerance for differing opinions. No tolerance for low- quality or uncivil posting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> That HN flag's this post but not some VC B.S. about company valuations is ironic. Can we call a moritorium on posts entirely about finance and money as well as posts like this one here about politics?

</comment><comment><USER90> Hackers have nothing to do with politics.

Just as much as whistleblowing and exposing fraud, espionage, or illegal activities has nothing to do with journalism and transparency. Let alone politics.

In general, software has nothing to do with anything but software itself. Take encryption: it has nothing to do with privacy, which has nothing to do with with surveillance which has nothing to do with politics.

Also - Startups also have nothing to do with the economy; Automation and design has nothing to do with the industry.

And while we're at it: Science has nothing to do with politics. That's why politicians ignore climatologists, physicists and biologists.

<comment><USER91> FeelsBadMan, I got it though ;)

<comment><USER90> It's like conventional currency vs cryptocurrency. If you couple the two, given enough market size for each, volatility couples as well. No need to go through the meanders of algorithms or blockchains.

(Coincidently, cryptocurrencies are just another target for some hackers with deep consequences for any economy that trusts them.)

Some things cannot be ignored, or seen as independent. They are stuck together since their conception.</comment></comment></comment>


Using the VT220 Serial Console as a Terminal in OS X - <AUTHOR> http://jstn.cc/post/8692501831 <comment><USER2> Can this be made to work using only the existing MAC keyboard? Or do you have to have both the VT220 and MAC keyboards on your desk?

<comment><USER3> If you only want a top window for example, you could make gettytab spawn one of those. But that would make it impossible to input anything to it.

If you want input as well, you could make gettytab spawn a screen session that you could then connect to from Terminal.app. But this would force you to have a terminal window open showing the same screen as the VT220, which would somewhat defeat the purpose.

It would also be possible to write a small script that spawns on the tty that would take its input from a file, or even from a network connection (using netcat, for instance). This would of course come with some security implications as well. Especially considering that the tty process will have root permissions (at least unless you drop privileges in the script).

 _Edit:_ I should probably make it clear: As far as I'm aware, you can't make the computer believe that input from the mac keyboard comes from the VT220. At least not trivially. But you can get around it using some other techniques.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> mhhmm reminds me to the AS400 Terminal running on a ~20 year old black/green Monitor, in the last company I worked at :)

Also I find this pretty cool: <http://mochasoft.dk/telnetbb.htm>

</comment><comment><USER5> Better tell IBM we don't have mainframes anymore.

<comment><USER6> I meant in the average computer-equipped office. By the way, if anyone knows where I can get a Cray X-MP I'd love to hear about it.</comment></comment>