Download the internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.dotnetdotcom.org/

<comment><USER2> The number of pages crawled keeps counting up. One per second. A glorious glance into the source code shows, it's faked (the counting).

</comment><comment><USER3> I love their navigation :

# Information on how to block our crawler. (Hint, it doesn't involve legal action)

# Our purpose and goal. (Yes we have one and no it doesn't involve spam)

# Our technology. (Thanks open source!)

[...]

</comment><comment><USER4> Their dump would be more useful if they...

(1) Used a preexisting aggregate web content format. Their ad hoc format is simple enough, but can't handle content with NULLs, and loses valuable information (such as time of capture -- you can't trust server 'Date' headers -- and resolved IP address at time of collection).

They could use the Internet Archive classic 'ARC' format (not to be confused with the older compression format of the same name):

<http://www.archive.org/web/researcher/ArcFileFormat.php>

Or the newer, more involved and chatty but still relatively straightforward 'WARC' format:

<http://archive-access.sourceforge.net/warc/>

(2) Explained how the 3.2 million pages in their initial dump were chosen. (That's only a tiny sliver of the web; where did they start and what did they decide to collect and put in this dataset?)

(FYI, I work at the Internet Archive.)

<comment><USER5> gojomo, I have looked at the file formats. Could you propose some off-the- shelf web spiders? I would like to accumulate a lot of text for NLP research.

<comment><USER4> At the Internet Archive we've created Heritrix for 'archival quality' crawling -- especially when you want to get every media type, and sites to complete/arbitrary depth, in large but polite crawls. (It's possible, but not usual for us, to configure it to only collect textual content.)

The Nutch crawler is also reasonable for broad survey crawls. HTTrack is also reasonable for 'mirroring' large groups of sites to a filesystem directory tree.

<comment><USER5> Could you outline how to configure it to collect only textual content?

<comment><USER4> Very roughly:

(1) Add a scope rule that throws out discovered URIs with popular non-textual extensions (.gif, .jpe?g, .mp3, etc.) before they are even queued.

(2) Add a 'mid-fetch' rule to FetchHTTP module that early-cancels any fetches with unwanted MIME types. (These rules run after HTTP headers are available.)

(3) add a processor rule to whatever is writing your content to disk (usually ARCWriterProcessor) that skips writing results (such as the early-cancelled non-textual results above) of unwanted MIME types.

Followup questions should go to the Heritrix project discussion list, <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/archive-crawler/> .

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How _could_ you use this?

Creative ideas please!

<comment><USER7> Write a better page rank algorithm?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think an open source google could be a pretty great project, I would imagine its been tried before, but by seperating out the steps where these guys crawl, other people build indexes, and others handle lookups, it sounds more reasonable than one project taking on the whole thing

<comment><USER8> The biggest problem here is hosting the index... in RAM...

It takes A LOT of machines to power a modern search engine which serves any real amount of traffic. One key component of an open source search engine would be a sort-of peer-to-peer distributed infrastructure. When I suggested this in an earlier thread, people were quick to point out the liability concerns here... but maybe it could work somehow... but then how do you get people to sign up for it?

That said, I think this is incredibly interesting stuff. I would really love to see open source, peer-served web utilities. For example, I'd want access to many of the components of a web search engine, not just the search results themselves. Things like a language model for spell checking or word segmentation. Or a set analysis tool for detecting synonyms.

<comment><USER7> Ya. Thats true. But purely from an data standpoint, having the same index as Google has would be valuable. Just because you can do so many things with it. Like, figuring out how to increase the page rank of your site!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's funny but just before I read this, somebody sent me some pictures of Barcelona (where I lived back in 2000-2001). I had a bunch of pictures on my (non-corporate) website from 2000 to about 2003. Rather than digging them up from somewhere on my various hard drives, I just turned to the internet archive. And there they were.

It also turned up this error message, forever preserved in amber, so to speak: [http://web.archive.org/web/20030802202553/www.permafrost.net...](http://web.archive.org/web/20030802202553/www.permafrost.net/gallery/Barcelona/unknown)

</comment><comment><USER10> dotbot is one of the data sources that SEOmoz uses for their Linkscape crawler. Not sure why it was submitted here but I suspect promotional motives.

It is interesting data, but when people build crawlers to index the entire www, especially if the data is intended as an SEO intelligence tool, certain issues arise. Some background on this particular issue: [http://incredibill.blogspot.com/2008/10/seomozs-new- linkscap...](http://incredibill.blogspot.com/2008/10/seomozs-new-linkscape- creates-webmaster.html)

<comment><USER11> Are you sure that Linkscape use the submitted organisations bot? I agree that it could just be promotional - as they are only giving access to some of their content (around 10% at my calc) but I'm not sure we're talking about the same bot in this instance

<comment><USER10> from <http://www.seomoz.org/linkscape/help/sources>

        * Dotnetdotcom.org
        * Grub.org/Wikia
        * Page-Store.com
        * Amazon/Alexa's crawl and internet archive resources
        * Exalead's commercially available data
        * Gigablast's commercially available data
        * Yahoo!'s BOSS API and other data sources
        * Microsoft's Live API and other data sources
        * Google's API and other data sources
        * Ask.com's API and other data sources
        * Additional crawls from open source, commercial and academic projects

In my experience, the single most useful feature (main selling point) of the Linkscape tool is that it reports http status codes (for a price) so SEOs can detect 301 redirects, etc. AFAIK, dotnetdotcom.org has the only free, publicly available crawl data which also includes http status codes. Not sure about Exalead and Gigablast but I am pretty sure the other SEs don't release this information. To clarify: I don't have any proof, and things may have changed, but I've read some intelligent speculation (smarter than me) which claims that dotbot/dotnetdotcom.org provides the majority of the data (especially the unique info, like status codes) for the Linkscape tool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> search.wikia.com uses Grub: <http://search.wikia.com/about/crawl.html>

And that index is also open for download, though I haven't looked much into it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Do check out at the bottom in the "Dotbot Spider Statistics" table:

      # of Tubes Found Clogged 7188420

<comment><USER14> Yes: they _do_ have a sense of humor.

And: are thoughtful enough to include typos, because (as we all know) some people appreciate the opportunity to find errors). [ "...discussion of girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife issues are stickily prohibited." ]

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's good to see activity in this space, with more people and offerings (even if some of them are semi-dodgy). It's been too quiet for a while, with just the major search engines and other big players doing their own proprietary indices.

</comment><comment><USER7> cool idea. they should add a bit torrent link for downloading.

<comment><USER16> There's one there already.

<comment><USER17> Is their tracker working for anyone? Not so much here.

<comment><USER18> The tracker is down, but I found some by adding some open trackers and activating DHT:

* <http://tracker.thepiratebay.org:80/announce>

* <http://denis.stalker.h3q.com:6969/announce>

* <http://tracker.soultcer.net:80/announce>

<comment><USER19> You found the peers through DHT. Randomly adding trackers doesn't really do much to help the torrent. Not unless _others_ have added the tracker as well. Which is unlikely if you added it on your own.

<comment><USER18> Since the first 2 are quite common "open trackers" (where open refers to the fact that they track any hash you submit), it is often quite likely to find sources there, because other people add them as well when they want more sources.

Furthermore my comment will lead to more people, who might not have a DHT- supporting client, adding those open trackers.

<comment><USER16> Which torrent clients out there don't support DHT these days?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Awesome idea. I like the flat file based indexing management they mentioned. Gosh almost wish they had a link whereby one could send them one's C.V.! Keep up the good work.

</comment><comment><USER21> Download the internet!

Or, at least, whatever doesn't block robots. :/

<comment><USER14> Yes: doesn't seem like it's going to be very "deep web", does it?</comment></comment>


SSL display in Microsoft Edge - <AUTHOR> https://certsimple.com/blog/ev-ssl-microsoft-edge

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Let me know if you'd like any other testing done. I'll also re- check if anything changes in the stable build, which should be out in 10 days time.</comment>


JavaScript on anything that looks, smells or feels like a computer - <AUTHOR> http://macgyver.fi/javascript.html <comment><USER2> This is baffling.

They basically replaced every instance of the word "Java" with "JavaScript" and it has zero to do with anything JS. HotJava, Java Beans, etc. I don't understand why this is here.

From the linked "article":

"Making JavaScript a comprehensive platform with continued development of JavaScriptOS, JavaScript Beans, the JavaScript chip, and HotJavaScript Making JavaScript ubiquitous in the industry Developing new applications including media, enterprise, security, and commerce APIs. Increasing profitability of the JavaScriptSoft division, with plans to be in the black by 2017. "

From JavaWorld, 1996:

"Baratz defined the JavaSoft strategy as a four-part plan: making Java a comprehensive platform with continued development of JavaOS, Java Beans, the Java chip, and HotJava; making Java ubiquitous in the industry; developing new applications, including media, enterprise, security, and commerce APIs; and increasing profitablity of the JavaSoft division, with plans to be in the black by 1998. --Kristi Essick, IDG News Service "

[http://www.javaworld.com/article/2077226/-em-javaworld-- em--...](http://www.javaworld.com/article/2077226/-em-javaworld--em--news- briefs--published-7-15-96-.html)

So wtf. I don't even. It's the old Sun World with some twisted rebranding.

Oh, I see, it's a joke--I get it now. Sorry.

<comment><USER2> (And yes, I _did_ see the Rick Astley bit, and thought to myself "Oh rick rolled" but... I'm an idiot.)</comment></comment>


Silicon Valley Needs To Take Itself More Seriously* - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/08/not/

<comment><USER2> "While there are many downsides to the mainstream exposure of Silicon Valley — the myriad fakers and sycophants that come along in any sort of high visibility situation — I'm willing to trade in occasionally having to deal with an annoying person if our values (entrepreneurship, self-reliance, fearlessness, disregard for a hierarchy, technical excellence) get a wider audience and more importantly, excite a fresh crop of high school seniors applying to college to go into CS because it 'sounds cool.'"

To the extent that I worry about this show, I have the opposite concern. Jersey Shore did not exactly make me want to move to Jersey and take up the lifestyle.

At the moment, to the extent that the country thinks about us at all, I think they think of us as brave folk trying to build the future. If this show convinces them we're a bunch of partying douches, that'll be sad. I'm not _too_ worried about it, but that's the potential bad outcome.

In 2002, I thought of I-bankers as smart, hard working people who were well compensated because what they did was difficult. Now I think of finance as mostly parasitic. Impressions can change.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article seems like mostly bullshit once you reach the the point in the article that concludes that the talent crunch is due to SV "taking itself too seriously." I'm not currently an SV engineer and I'm not entirely sure I want to be, but the claim is patently ridiculous.

And as a side gripe about the article, it annoys me at least a little for everyone to be diminished to "coders" by someone who admittedly hasn't put in the time to learn basic programming. As far as I'm concerned, "coder" is a half step above "code monkey" and the engineers building the next Google or Facebook or any moderately successful tech company are not code monkeys.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't agree with the premise of this article. It makes it sound like people who don't like this upcoming show don't like to have fun.

Personally, I would love to see a show about Silicon Valley, especially one that has a lot of comedy in it. But this show portrays a glamorous lifestyle which seems really condescending and skips what puts the "silicon" in Silicon Valley.

With that said, I think Techcrunch is disagreeing just for the sake of disagreeing; it puts them in a position to put down other people (ex. pandodaily) and generate more buzz.

<comment><USER5> I would love to see a real show too, but reality TV and founding a company are anathema to each other. Cheever put it best in his joke e-mail. How are you supposed to be heads down, focusing on solving the right problems when TV cameras are all around? It's not surprising that no one credible or serious actually signed up for this for fear of career suicide.

I don't think TC's trying to put down anyone either. The irony is that Lacy wanted to do her own reality TV show startup competition that ended in Las Vegas, but Randi beat her to the punch her own mainstream TV deal. So Sarah's just trying to position herself as the "serious" authority in Silicon Valley for later deals down the road even though she is very much part of the same overall trend toward superficiality and showmanship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I often wonder what the culture of a third tech innovation hub would be like outside NY/SV (And I hate to say it, but Boston and NY are interchangeable for the purposes of cultural discussion).

The only cultural thread I've been able to pick up that is common to all the U.S. tech hubs is great baseball teams.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure what to make of the Giants being considered a great team, but it's probably not a discussion for here.

I kind of want to plug Austin, though, as the third tech hub. There have already been some successful companies come out of Austin and Capital Factory is trying to build a YC of Austin of sorts. With Austin being a top-5 fastest growing US city over the last 10 years[1], plus the awesome climate, relatively reasonable cost of living and UT's engineering program, I think the pieces are in place for some exciting stuff to happen here.

[1][http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2012/real_estate/1204/gallery...](http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2012/real_estate/1204/gallery.US- Cities/5.html)

<comment><USER7> The problem with Austin though is that once a company gets successful, it moves to Silicon Valley, destroying any sense of community Austin might be building.

Austin is a great city -- they need to figure out how to get successful people to stay there.</comment></comment></comment>


Israel sperm banks find quality is plummeting - <AUTHOR> http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/15/world/la-fg-israel-sperm-20120816

<comment><USER2> "Speculative theories range from the mundane (carrying cellphones in front pockets) to the far-fetched (depleted uranium from exploded munitions)."

Strange. Depleted uranium is almost certainly a better guess than cellphones. The health effects of DU are pretty well understood, while cellphone radiation is in the realm of quackery.

<comment><USER3> "Strange. Depleted uranium is almost certainly a better guess than cellphones"

Especially given the several tonnes that have been embedded in the ground (and Palestinians) around Gaza. General conscription means radioactive fun for everyone!

<comment><USER4> > General conscription means radioactive fun for everyone!

Depleted uranium isn't a radiation risk.

If you can't be bothered to get simple scientific facts correct, why should I think that you're accurate on other things?

<comment><USER3> > If you can't be bothered to get simple scientific facts correct, why should > I think that you're accurate on other things?

 _Ahem._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Radiological_h...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Radiological_hazards)

If you can't react like a mature adult, why should I think that you can debate like one?

<comment><USER4> A description of "the radiation risk" does not imply that there is a radiation risk.

At some level, lead is radioactive. So is coal. So is atmospheric carbon. However, we don't consider any of these radiation risk. (They're instances of a more general rule, namely that almost everything is radioactive, which means that we can talk about the radiation risk of almost anything.)

That's why your reference didn't talk about radiation dangers associated with depleted uranium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "There's also a political aspect, because birthrates among Arabs in Israel have at times been as much as double those of Jews, triggering a population race that some believe could one day affect who controls the land."

What problem is there in Arabs "controlling" the land?

<comment><USER6> This question veers off into a political conversation that's off-topic for HN, so I'll stick to a factual answer and leave it at that: Israel is currently defined as "a Jewish and Democratic State".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure I understand how they are measuring quality in these sperm. The article mentions that they are now rejecting 80% of their candidates based on the simple fact that their sperm is not up to the same standards they set years ago.

What if their standards are flawed? Is there scientific proof that straight- moving and quick sperm is of higher 'quality' or 'healthier'? Is the sperm bank promising me a strong child that will grow tall or what is this quality metric in fact measuring?

<comment><USER8> They are measuring sperm motility, which is a way to gauge the sperm's ability to fertilize an egg.

<comment><USER7> So they measure every spermatozoid's motility? It seems like a daunting task.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The solution is fairly easy: start importing it</comment>


ReactXP – A library for building cross-platform apps - <AUTHOR> https://microsoft.github.io/reactxp/ <comment><USER2> Can we please stop trying to Javascriptify everything? The cross-platform thing has been tried again and again and again, and always runs into the same pitfalls: poor mimicry of native standards, inefficiency, debugging difficulty because of abstraction layer built on abstraction layer, enabling developers with poor understanding of the underlying platform to make an absolute mess of an app for others to maintain later on, and so on.

<comment><USER3> I disagree entirely... I hate how an app for everything means vendor lock-in. Developers should embrace web standards and come together on making apps/tools that don't suck. I think having to write for android, ios, osx, windows, chromeos and linux sucks worse..

<comment><USER4> A million times yes.

Apps do the same things everywhere. Why do we still need completely different languages, codebases, etc (not to mention teams of experienced hires) to deploy any little CRUD app?

Maybe we aren't interested in fixing this because it means there's less engineering to be done.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

<comment><USER5> I'd be interested in solving it, but not with Javascript.

I think it's less about engineering costs and more about dislike of javascript. Maybe even specifically javascript tooling and electron.

A big reason people want to standardize on javascript is because it is the runtime of the Web - I can't wait for Web assembly to get even better so we can standardize on something else.

<comment><USER6> Technically the source code in OP is Typescript.

<comment><USER5> But technically all javascript is also valid typescript... OTOH you can set a strict mode (I think)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> With the issues I've had with React Native, I'm keeping my eye on Flutter, great dev experience backed by a well resourced team, hope to see its ecosystem catch up.

A couple of projects to watch out for:

[1]: [https://feather-apps.com/](https://feather-apps.com/)

[2]: [https://github.com/google/flutter-desktop- embedding](https://github.com/google/flutter-desktop-embedding)

<comment><USER8> Curious, what are some of the issues you've had with React Native? Any big pitfalls to watch out for?

<comment><USER2> Just a few:

\- As another commenter mentioned, they ignore and close legitimate issues on a regular basis

\- Breaking changes are a way of life and extremely frequent

\- They ignore native warnings: our project had zero before introducing RN, now has hundreds

\- Navigation is a mess

\- Integration with existing native apps works for tiny features but falls apart in larger teams

\- Debugging issues that cross the JS <> Native boundary is a nightmare

\- Keeping pace with native updates is made much more difficult by the API churn- want to update to Xcode 10? First you have to update RN, which will break all your features

\- Poor maintenance of views meant to mimic native views

\- If you have a hybrid native/RN app, instead of reducing the platforms you have to support from 2 to 1, you've effectively increased it from 2 to 3

<comment><USER9> I agree with some of these. It's really annoying that Facebook can't figure out how to hire a dozen or so talented developers to focus on the open source side of react and try to minimize the number of warts that people in the community end up having to deal with.

While React Native is open source, Facebook does not prioritize needs that are outside of its core use cases. So many frustrating aspects of RN go unfixed by FB, and issues and PRs about them get ignored by the arrogant guy who closes issues without any explanation. Not sure how he thinks he's helping anyone by doing that.

<comment><USER10> > It's really annoying that Facebook can't figure out how to hire a dozen or > so talented developers to focus on the open source side of react

Now that I think about it, I think I would actually enjoy being employed to help maintain the React Native project. I really had a lot of fun building a React Native app, but there were so many issues that didn't get any attention. It would be quite fun to spend all day helping people with issues, fixing bugs, writing tests, and merging PRs. That probably sounds like a terrible job to some other developers, but I really enjoy it, and it would be great to get paid for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd love to hear more about how this differentiates from existing alternatives, namely Proton Native[1] and the NodeJS bindings to libui[2]. I am specifically interested to see how/if/when Microsoft will support Linux and macOS, as the aforementioned solutions already do.

[1] [https://proton-native.js.org/#/](https://proton-native.js.org/#/)

[2] [https://github.com/parro-it/libui-node](https://github.com/parro- it/libui-node)

<comment><USER12> Yes, it will be cross platform, it's all part of the move of Office to React, see this whole Twitter thread [0] from Sean Larkin:

> And here's ReactXP which is baked in to Skype (consumer) to make it possible > to ship _cross plat_ and single code base native applications with > consistent UI

[0]: [https://twitter.com/TheLarkInn/status/1006857447364063232](https://twitter.com/TheLarkInn/status/1006857447364063232)

<comment><USER13> I don't see anything about moving office to react there.

<comment><USER14> The developer who started that twitter thread massively overstated how much react was going to be used in MS Office applications because for some reason he didn't like that a college professor said that scripting languages aren't appropriate for developing an office suite. You can see in the first tweet he says that all of the office applications are being re-written in javascript, and after everyone was thoroughly dissapointed that MS would do that, other developers from MS commented here and on reddit that all of the office tools were going to stay written in C++, and react was only going to be used for some of the UI design, there was never a plan to rewrite everything in react.

<comment><USER15> To be fair, he never said Office (the good old Office "client"), he said Office 365, which is the web app version of Office basically.

Everyone knows Office is C/C++. Ported to iOS and Android thanks to that.

<comment><USER16> Officially Office 365 includes the subscription version of the native client apps. The web apps are called Office Online. Lots of people are confused about this though, as it's confusing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anyone know which definition of lightweight is in effect here? :)

I see Atom called lightweight all the time. I remember when my PC had a 5MEG HDD and exactly 640k of RAM, so...

I'm curious what amount of resources (disk, runtime memory etc) is used for something like a small CRUD app (think simple phonebook or CD library)

If you know the answer for proton native, please post that too!

<comment><USER18> I don't see the point to mentioning the specs of your old PC. My first computer had 4k and a tape drive does that mean software for your PC was bloated?

<comment><USER17> Context

</comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b I'd be more interested in knowing if someone had ported the ideas behind react in a cross platform language, rather than shipping a JavaScript engine with all your apps. Or maybe there should a JavaScript virtual machine in the OS itself.

<comment><USER19> [https://github.com/pojala/electrino](https://github.com/pojala/electrino) is electron alternative that uses the system's own web browser engine.

<comment><USER20> I had the same idea: a lightweight variant of Electron, that just uses WKWebView for the GUI and JavaScriptCore for the core functionality, passing messages between them (serializing via JSON).

I have a proof of concept already, but it's not cross-platform so that's a major downside, and I don't think many people need the combination of (1) Mac- only, (2) lightweight, (3) using JS for the core logic, (4) using web views for the GUI. I just don't think there's a market for that.

<comment><USER21> Your idea is not bad. In fact it has been done multiple times already.

[https://github.com/zserge/webview](https://github.com/zserge/webview)

[https://github.com/Boscop/web-view](https://github.com/Boscop/web-view)

and so on

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's mention of MacOS in the codebase and a few PRs but there are no samples or documentation on getting it working, which is a little frustrating.

[https://github.com/Microsoft/reactxp/issues/19#issuecomment-...](https://github.com/Microsoft/reactxp/issues/19#issuecomment-371781900)

</comment><comment><USER23> I think ReactXP is not a visionary project but Microsoft's approach to take advantage of javascript developers and make them able to build mobile apps for Windows phones beside indispensable platforms(Android, iOS).

<comment><USER24> Wait, isn't Windows phone officially dead? [https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-41551546](https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-41551546)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > web, iOS, Android, and Windows.

So cross platform minus Linux then?

</comment><comment><USER26> It's from 2016.

<comment><USER27> And latest release a year ago. Bamboozled on HN again :)

<comment><USER28> Here is the version history. As other comments mentioned, last release was 5 days ago: [https://microsoft.github.io/reactxp/versions/version_history...](https://microsoft.github.io/reactxp/versions/version_history.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seriously, Microsoft? From your own websites:

Xamarin: _Deliver native Android, iOS, and Windows apps with a single shared .NET code base._

ReactXP: _Share most of your code between the web, iOS, Android, and Windows._

<comment><USER30> What is surprising about this?

Microsoft wants people who would otherwise only have written iOS and Android apps to also write Windows apps.

<comment><USER29> Could've been done with Xamarin.

<comment><USER30> would that still achieve the goal of reducing the cost for people who know ReactJS to develop for Windows?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Where are the live demos?

<comment><USER32> I built RXPTest, and TodoList for the web

[https://imgur.com/a/qWDsaGd](https://imgur.com/a/qWDsaGd)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> From the article: ""XP means X-Platform Share most of your code between the web, iOS, Android, and Windows.""

So, not exactly cross-platform.

<comment><USER34> It's a fair use of the term, and the kind of thing I would expect from old Microsoft. Maybe they'll add support for mac, linux, bsd, etc later.

<comment><USER35> It's an Open Source project so maybe community members will add support for those other platforms?

Quick search of the project issues shows that macOS is already mostly supported: [https://github.com/Microsoft/reactxp/issues/19](https://github.com/Microsoft/reactxp/issues/19)

It looks the project leads want more consensus on Linux React Native (ie, something actively maintained and preferably merged to mainline React Native support): [https://github.com/Microsoft/reactxp/issues/41](https://github.com/Microsoft/reactxp/issues/41)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > Share most of your code between the web, iOS, Android, and Windows

How is it better than React and React Native if it still is web+mobile+Windows and doesn't offer Linux and macOS support? Also doesn't the fact React is by Facebook and ReactXP is by Microsoft and introduces Windows support look suspicious like if they were building an incompatible version of React like they've done with Java in the past?

</comment><comment><USER37> Looked at the code in their components section and is it safe to say that we need to use Typescript to use this?

<comment><USER38> JS interfaces with TS rather nicely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm sure this was in the works well before Safari/iOS 11 implemented the majority of the PWA standard, but can someone help me understand what the target market is for this in 2018?

We just built a ground-up PWA and users LOVE it (Android/iOS, tablet/phone/PC).

Why complicate and slow your programming + production software down by trying to XP?

</comment><comment><USER40> Name clash with ReactOS, reimplementation of Windows.

<comment><USER41> It's not just React, it's ReactXP.

Remember 2001, when everything was named XP - WindowsXP, AthlonXP, etc? The name is almost nostalgic.

And being Microsoft, I'm surprised it's not "ReactXP.NET for Windows Server by Cortana".

<comment><USER16> XP to mean cross-platform is well established, for example XPCOM used by Mozilla/Firefox. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPCOM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XPCOM)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> What a surprise that a supposedly "cross-platform" solution from Microsoft does not support any of the competing platforms (macOS, Linux...). /s Smells of EEE...

<comment><USER43> I mean: [https://microsoft.github.io/reactxp/docs/faq.html](https://microsoft.github.io/reactxp/docs/faq.html)

It's _React_ , it supports iOS, Android, Windows and web...

What was the point of your comment?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Newbie question but will this help me also write desktop apps?

<comment><USER45> Yep, you can build [UWP]([https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/get- started/uni...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/get- started/universal-application-platform-guide)) apps with it, not sure if there's a OS X desktop solution

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> That name harkened back to era of Internet Explorer 6 and evoked painful related JS/CSS development memories even before realizing it's Microsoft's project :D

</comment><comment><USER46> This is a reddit-tier joke, but now all that's left to do is get XP running in XP.</comment>


Puppeteers Making Performance Art Weird Again - <AUTHOR> https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-punk-puppeteers-making-performance-art-weird <comment><USER2> How is this "punk" it's just weird.

Punk is weird, but not all weird things are punk.

<comment><USER3> It has some with the "DIY" attitude and "authenticity" rejection of norms but doesn't seem quite societally linked in ethos to qualify - even by the less typical strands like Cryptopunks.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you hire me as an intern? - <AUTHOR> http://raed.tn/?l=en

<comment><USER2> I can't comment too much about hiring interns--we've only done it once and I wasn't involved. But I think you'd get phone interviews from companies like mine* next year for junior positions, and offers if those went well.

As for this page, I don't know if you have a traditional resume, but I do have concerns about it as someone who's interviewed/read resumes for Junior devs.

1) I don't know what your progress bars are supposed to mean, and I'm forced to make inferences/guesses about what they mean. Don't make me guess, because I might not guess the way you want me to.

2) I don't like the read more link under your experience section. In fact, before I started writing a response here, I didn't read it.

I'd rather have the text that I want to see inline ("authored PHP plug-in for the HostBill CMS to automate the task of domain registration, validation and domain name changes. This reduced the response time from several days to a couple of minutes, enhancing the user experience dramatically.") (P.S. What did this PHP plugin use? Frameworks, persistence, etc?)

If you want a "read more" link that does a cute popup that a reader probably won't click on, that's ok.

* We're an unsexy enterprise Saas company. We're certainly not Google, but we aim to hire good developers.

<comment><AUTHOR> 0) Thanks for the response, much appreciated.

1) This is the second comment I get on the progress bars, I will be investigating another form of data visualization.

2) The popups have been on my TODO list for a while, I agree that a shorter re-write would be more efficient than a fancy animation.

I will get on this ASAP, Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have a bit of feedback:

\- _My idea of a pastime is, no doubt, literature, music and organizing social events. "_

First, remove 'no doubt', it makes the sentence clunky and to be honest, it made me think that you used Google Translate to build this. That isn't bad per se, but it made me question whether you truly have professional-level fluency in English.

In fact, I would likely rewrite that whole sentence.

\- The percentages in your progress bars make me ask (myself) too many questions.

When you prepare a resume, assume that the reader will see 1000 resumes and seek out ways to cull the herd. In this case, I find myself asking things like "how does 70% in .js compare to 75% in HTML5??" Or, "I see that you can set up Joomla. Does that count as 80% knowledge of PHP??" You don't want a reviewer to have to make guesses about what your resume means - we rarely guess in your favour...

You likely want keywords in your resume, but I wonder whether it would be a better use of space if you expanded on your projects a little more.

\- The descriptions in your skills section make me wonder if you're telling the truth.

For example, consider, "Logo design, Typography, Graphic creation... (Photoshop/Illustrator/Inkscape/..)" When you say that but only show skills in Photoshop and Illustrator, I wonder if you have ever actually done any typography or logo design, or if you have ever used Inkscape. That makes me question the rest of your resume!

Those little issues aside, you did a good job and should be proud of yourself. Good luck in your search, your project and the rest of your Masters!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to respond.

-Most comments mentioned the "progress bar issue", honestly this is the first time I thought that this would be a problem. According to you, what's the best way to display skills?

-I wanted to balance between keywords/length/readable-content (not sure if that worked) but if I didn't mention a number of tools or "skills" it is mainly not to make this section too long.

As I'm currently looking for a project mainly related to embedded systems, do you think that I should just comment out all the "unrelated" fields?

Thank you again =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't say that I completely understand the use of progress bars for your skills, but overall you've got a nice set there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. As a student I'm aware that perfectly mastering a skill is difficult. I put the progress bars because I thought it would be pretentious to just mention a language or a framework and pretend that I master it fully.

<comment><USER5> To be fair I'm very skeptical when I look at those graphs. "80%" progress would suggest me that you're extremely fluent not only in language (as in syntax), but you also have deeper understanding of how it works under the hood (so at least familiarity with the specification + being able to use that knowledge in practice), and probably familiarity with some most popular frameworks/libraries. And I just find it hard to believe (not saying I'm right) you have that much skill in 2 languages (which would take quite some time of actually working as a dev, I think), and not much less in another 4 (~70%). That's a lot. I'd much rather see language + brief overview of skills (frameworks, is it mostly knowing of syntax or you have actually built some larger scale projects with it)

<comment><USER6> Also, how does one average their level of knowledge against things they don't know? If you asked me how good I was at C# 3 years ago, I probably would have said 75%. Three years later, I would say 65%.

I'm significantly better at C# now than I was 3 years ago, but I'm also more aware of the things I don't understand. I also recently saw a Jon Skeet talk and it ruined my level of self-worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would suggest buying a Kindle book titled "The End of Jobs" by Taylor Pearson [http://taylorpearson.me](http://taylorpearson.me) and look at the chapter on apprenticeships. Taylor gives excruciating detail on what a would- be apprentice (and the entrepreneur contemplating the responsibility of taking on an apprentice) should do, and what to expect from the relationship.

You may find it useful in landing the position you desire.

</comment><comment><USER8> What are the requirements of your graduation project? Topic/timespan?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your interest. My project can be about any subject relative to embedded systems/wearable/IoT..

The project would start early 2016 (February/March) and should be around 4/5 months long.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here: Wow! that's a lot of traffic thank you!

Even if you're not currently hiring, I would love to get some feedback on the resume and if there is anything that should change.</comment>


Aereo Laying Off Staff in NYC and Boston - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2014/11/06/aereo-tells-boston-employees-its-shutting-down-november-12th/

<comment><USER2> I honestly believe that much of the depression we see in tech is caused by unrealistic expectations of success, mostly due to the breathless survivor- biased media cacophony of all these rags-to-riches, out-of-nowhere, dropped- out-of-college success stories.

Therefore, although I don't want to dance on anyone's grave, I think it's important to recognize and mourn catastrophic failures like Aereo and understand that, no, success is not as easy to come by as they'd like us to believe. If it were, you'd see repeat entrepreneurs (not named Jobs or Musk, I guess) doing it flawlessly over and over.

To that end, here is Aereo's fundraising history, to the tune of $100M.

[http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/aereo](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/aereo)

It's interesting. I'm actually not sure there is a lesson to be learned here. Aereo innovated against legal boundaries, not really technological ones, and the gavel falling on the wrong side was always a distinct possibility. Should they have not tested that boundary?</comment>


Wifi router could be killing plants - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/wireless-router-wi-fi-plants/

<comment><USER2> Terrible, terrible article about a ridiculously unrobust experiment. Clickbait even by the standards of Daily Dot.

</comment><comment><USER3> >An experiment by a handful of high school students in Denmark

Enough said.

This was in Natural News, which means it's definitely bogus. Come on HN, you're better than this pseudoscience clickbait.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for an API similar to Twilio but for Video Conferencing - <AUTHOR>

I've been searching for an API similar to Twilio but for Web Conferencing for months and haven't found anything. I'm familiar with all the current web-conference providers but rarely do they have an API.<p>The closest thing we've found in Vidyo.com, but talk about expensive! There has to be something out there. <comment><USER2> OpenTok: <http://www.tokbox.com/opentok/api>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We've checked them out and even built a couple of prototypes but was not impressed with video quality.</comment></comment>


Freedom of Speech: A Right for Everybody, or Only for Like-Minded People? - <AUTHOR> https://heterodoxacademy.org/social-science-freedom-of-speech/ <comment><USER2> From a meta standpoint, it's interesting to me that the most vociferous deniers of free speech throughout history have made some version of the case "But they're wrong!" (You can add stupid, evil, whatnot. The point is that whatever they're saying, it should not be said because it is not correct)

Whereas folks supporting free speech have made the argument: maybe I'm wrong. I don't know everything, and I've been wrong before. More concisely, looking back through history a lot of those times we got so upset about people saying various things, we were wrong. Those people changed all of us for the better. Unless we continue to humbly think we could continue to be wrong, we stop evolving. Cue curtain. There's no way to have difficult societal discussions and fight for the moral and right thing for all of us if we're constantly going to use current group consensus as a measure of what can be said or not. That's not progress. That's a popularity contest.

<comment><USER3> > "But they're wrong!"

I'm pro-free speech, but this is a pretty disingenuous take on the other side.

Pretty much without fail, the argument to restrict speech is not merely, "but they're wrong!", it's some variant of, "but they're harmful! Their speech is hurting people!"

And the truth is, quite often they're right. Not in the sense of "people's feelings are hurt by bad speech", but in the sense of, "this speech openly displayed encourages X, which is associated with actual, tangible harms to people". E.g. maybe that one racist dude isn't himself inciting anyone to violence through his screeds, but he's encouraging sentiment that does lead to real world violence and other harms.

One of the more understandable restrictions is the ban on Nazi imagery in Germany. Yes, it's a violation of free speech, but given their history one can see why they would consider this a special case.

<comment><USER4> You can _always_ construct a credible argument for how any statement is "encouraging sentiment that does lead to real world violence and other harms".

So with that "exception", you can ban absolutely anything.

<comment><USER5> So, two things:

1\. Your assertion has empirical counter-examples. My favorite example is Tinker. The dissent in that case already foreshadows exactly your concern, that the "substantial disruption" test was quite arbitrary. But, in fact, lower courts were by-and-large extraordinarily friendly toward student speech when applying the Tinker test. So much so that SCOTUS has had to limit the scope of Tinker at least a few times in the intervening years (e.g., Hazelwood and Morse). It's not perfect, but no reasonable person looking at the historical record can say that the "substantial disruption" exception to free speech was used to ban "absolutely anything". And "substantial disruption" is probably the most mild form of harm.

2\. Remember that TulliusCicero isn't arguing against free speech. They're only pointing out that DanielBMarkham's particular defense of free speech isn't compelling. I think that's fair. DanielBMarkham's approach toward defending free speech, which has at its roots in some enlightenment-era ideas about what man is, really doesn't provide us with a good conceptual framework for addressing TulliusCicero's critique.

So, although I'm pro-free speech, but I don't think the argument that either you or DanielBMarkham put forward are particularly compelling.

If you want to defend free speech, you have to honestly deal with the valid concern that speech really can harm. Insisting that man is a rational animal, or even that the search for truth will always lead to good outcomes, is... just not historically compelling.

<comment><USER2> You're certainly not using SCOTUS arguments for Enlightenment ideals. I sure hope not.

My argument was mean in the generic and at an abstract level. I understand that for some people this is not compelling. Conversely, if were to dive down into specifics, we would need a somewhat lengthy conversation about where the guardrails were and where the (hopefully unmovable) goalposts were.

Of course at some level of analysis free speech can cause harm, otherwise there would be no point in defending it. My admittedly-oversimplified point, which I have yet to see refuted, is that in the main, we really suck at predicting the difference between harm and progress. Many times it takes decades or centuries to sort it out. From there we can end up with the law being an ass[1] or some finer definition of legitimate public policy choices. But unless we can all admit that we suck at determining who should speak or not, we really don't have a basis to continue the conversation, legally or philosophically.[2]

It's fine to say "Let's start here, and given the current tech, governmental structures, and laws we live under, where do we go?" It's also fine to say "What is the purpose of letting people say things that can hurt others, anyway?" Pick one. I chose the second one. If you'd like to talk about the first one, that's a completely different conversation. However if you don't grok the conversation on root principles, it's unlikely any sort of more complex or nuanced conversation is going to lead you anywhere useful. That has to be where we all start.

Also, insisting man is a rational animal is yet another can of worms which I didn't open up. I don't think man is a rational animal at all, and that doesn't change my opinion or where I think the conversation has to begin.

[1] [https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-law-is-an- ass.html](https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-law-is-an-ass.html)

[2] When I say that we suck at determining who should speak or not, I mean in a moral, ethical, and public policy sense. I do not mean in a legal sense. Obviously there's a ton of case law around most all of our amendments. I'm surveying a landscape, not preparing a legal brief.

<comment><USER5> _> You're certainly not using SCOTUS arguments for Enlightenment ideals. I sure hope not._

Sorry, I'm not sure what that means. The Tinker example was just a demonstration that, empirically, adding "harm reduction" exceptions to free speech doesn't always result in arbitrary restrictions on speech. Not for any profound ultimate reason, but just because that's just not how the herd dynamics of on particular judiciary worked.

 _> But unless we can all admit that we suck at determining who should speak or not, we really don't have a basis to continue the conversation, legally or philosophically._

Okay. But that's a bit of a strawman. I don't see anyone here arguing that perfect censorship is possible. NB: most people in this thread aren't even arguing against free speech. We just don't think you're providing a compelling justification for free speech. Which is different from disagreeing with your conclusion. But the difference isn't pedantic; it has important down-stream effects and implications.

 _> insisting man is a rational animal is yet another can of worms which I didn't open up... I don't think man is a rational animal at all, and that doesn't change my opinion or where I think the conversation has to begin._

Well, I think my entire point was that you _do_ open that can of worms and perhaps don't even realize it.

Perhaps you misunderstand what I mean by "rational" here. I don't mean "perfectly rational" or "good at reasoning" or "not susceptible to emotion/propaganda" or anything like that. I mean it in a much more basic "what is that thing that is happening when we think and speak, regardless of any consideration of truth or correctness or progress or any of that" sense.

To keep things concise and specific, the following sentences exemplify the thing I find philosophically suspect in the way you think about free speech:

\- _" a lot of those times we got so upset about people saying various things, we were wrong. Those people changed all of us for the better."_

\- _" we really suck at predicting the difference between harm and progress."_

\- _" Unless we continue to humbly think we could continue to be wrong, we stop evolving."_

I disagree that these propositions are even particularly meaningful.

To be clear and to avoid a tangent, it's _not_ that I disagree because I think the opposite. I.e., I disagree equally and in the exact same way with the statement "we are good at predicting the difference between harm and progress".

My disagreement is at a fundamental and philosophical level. In the sense that I think there's a bunch of incorrect stuff we have to assume about the role that rationality plays in human thought and human language (and, therefore, human politics) in order for a discussion about _any_ of these propositions to _even make sense_.

Perhaps this will help get the point across: when I say "you think man is a rational animal", what I really mean is that you have a very specific type of answer you're going to give to the question: "what is the reason that it doesn't occur to us to use any of the quotes I listed above to talk about deer or bears or whales?" And your answer to that question is simply not the answer I would give.

(NB, to avoid a tangent, it's the _reason_ those sentences have meaning for humans and not other animals -- not _whether_ they have meaning for one and not the other -- that is the thing that I think we disagree on at some sort of fundamental philosophical level.)

You see enlightened subjects coming to belief (perhaps false or perhaps true) through the use of cognition (perhaps logical or perhaps emotional; perhaps sound logic or perhaps bad logic; perhaps positive emotion or perhaps negative emotion).

I see a herd of animals acted upon by emergent social phenomenon over which no one of the herd has particularly much control.

When I think about the reason for free speech, I think about herd dynamics and the importance (or not) of entropy. When you think about the reason for free speech, you think about individuals reasoning and the limits (or not) of rationality. Of course both of us see shades of each, I'm just much more to one side of that continuum and you're much more to the other side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are topics we can reason abstractly about well, and topics we cannot. I find when people get to the edge of their abilities in a topic, we tend to fall back on moralizing and personalizing it. The author's link between cognitive ability and liberality towards speech I think can be explained by how cognitive ability is the capability to think abstractly about things using properties and categories, and not explained using the implication that believing in certain rights is a proxy for smart.

The speech and tolerance question is hyper-personalized because the tools for reasoning abstractly about it have a steep learning curve. Some of the most educated people I know hold objectively extreme political views because I think it's something they don't really consider in the abstract, and expressing those views is a sympathetic outlet for other personalized anxieties. Ultimately I think political discussion is something they engage in for excitement and entertainment, and so they aren't held to the same level of intellectual rigor in it as they are in their chosen fields of expertise. Extreme views become a kind of vice or indulgence because it's exciting to be outraged and engage in recreational conflict - especially when it has no bearing on their real expertise.

I'd argue what we may think about freedom of speech doesn't actually matter, as public discourse is no longer about ideas, principle or reason, it's just a power struggle. One that otherwise smart people seem to participate in as intellectual tourists without much thought as to what their impact actually is because it's exciting.

<comment><USER7> I think this hits the nail right on the head, but I think there is more...

The point at which theoretical political dogma transition from a recreational debate into a something an intelligent person might feel uncomfortably obligated to place more thought into, is when there are real personal impacts on them.

Everyone can talk about universal healthcare as an intellectual concept, but it's not until they finally have the experience in a socialized hospital that they might take the time to wonder about the real merits of a single-payer system (this is a random example - don't get hung up on it).

This problem is then amplified by two recent phenomena...

1\. The drastic decrease in age of the average political participant. With Reddit as an example, the average age of Reddit users has dropped nearly 1 year for every year over the last ten years. Presumably, Twitter has seen the same demographic shift. This means these politically active users have less education to fall back on, and approach these subjects with more emotion. That leads to more insults and less constructive arguments, and a general intolerance of opposition.

2\. International participation. There is a drastic increase in US social media platforms from non-US participants. For those people, the debates are _pure_ recreational debates as they will never see the consequences of any systemic changes. They have no skin in the game, so the most radical options always seem more appealing.

...and of course there is also _intentional_ foreign influence campaigns to polarize online discussions.

I think the way out is to rethink how social media is structured. It's causing some very systemic issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So I've been sitting in this comment thread for a while and something has been bothering me. I'm noticing two things that are consistently brought up:

1\. Free speech as some sort of abstract enlightenment ideal.

2\. Cases of clear injustice in our past that stemmed from denial of free speech.

But that's not really why this article was posted, was it? It's really part of the ongoing modern conversations we're having around certain groups claiming their free speech rights are being infringed.

I think that injustice was done to Galileo, but I'm not going to shed a tear for somebody who was booted from an internet community for arguing that certain races have a lower IQ and LGBT+ folk are degenerates that need to be sterilized, even if they do it in a faux-earnest way.

<comment><USER9> > for somebody who was booted from an internet community for arguing that > certain races have a lower IQ and LGBT+ folk are degenerates that need to be > sterilized

Usually this is not why people are booted off from platforms but rather because they do not follow a specific rhetoric or because somebody claims that they said X while they actually said Y. See the recent stallman case for example. I was actually censored from a certain platform for defending stallman's right to express what he thinks regarding pedophilia.

> for arguing that certain races have a lower IQ

Is this not a science related-debate? If anything this (in general things related to science) is the kind of speech that should be protected the most.

<comment><USER10> > Usually this is not why people are booted off from platforms

As someone who worked on a social media platform (large, but not one of the largest), I got to see the evidence that admins and moderators used to make their judgements (which they aren't given much time to do) and frequently the banned user mischaracterizes their actual behavior (both current and previous) and has an incomplete understanding of what the ToS says or the implications of the literal ToS text.

I don't know about Stallman or more academic exercises, but the average person arguing on social media is very likely to go over the threshold of acceptable behavior and may not even know what the threshold for which social media companies are required to report content to police.

The best thing platforms can do to mitigate some of these issues is to give public explanations of their ToS as the moderators are taught to interpret them (basically reduce the information loss from the ToS legalese) and to give moderators more freedom to explain exactly what behavior violated exactly what part of the ToS (reducing some of the confusion from ambiguity).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My self-check on restricting freedoms is whether I would let someone I ardently oppose have the same power.

<comment><USER12> This times a million.

"If you invent a weapon, eventually your enemies will have it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is it ever a good idea to tell someone the worst things about them? I would say maybe, depends on the context, because talking is always preferable to violence. But there does come a point, when talking is just used to organize violence. So clearly there is a line.

"Tutsi were increasingly viewed with suspicion; Radio Rwanda aired incitement to ethnic hatred and a pogrom was organised on 11 October in a commune in Gisenyi Province, killing 383 Tutsi."

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

<comment><USER14> Inciting imminent lawless action is not covered under the first amendment.

<comment><USER10> > So clearly there is a line.

So you agree with your parent.

> is not covered under the first amendment

The 1A doesn't explicitly define its limited uses, but thru jurisprudence, courts have ruled that the 1A only protects American persons within the USA and that it's not an absolute protection, but can be infringed / withdrawn / overridden if it violates the rights of others or the national security interests of the country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The two dead comments below are right. The premise of the article is that people who scored higher on IQ tests tended to be more likely to support free speech. That's got to be the laziest argument I've ever seen.

<comment><USER16> It wasn't even an IQ test. According to the paper, they gave participants 10 words, with each word being presented with 5 other words. They were instructed to match each of the 10 target words with the closest of the 5 words. The claim is that vocabulary knowledge is highly correlated with general intelligence, and so this simple test is a proxy for cognitive ability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Now that the show is over, and we have jointly exercised our constitutional rights, we would like to leave you with one very important thought: Some time in the future, you may have the opportunity to serve as a juror in a so-called obscenity case. It would be wise to remember that the same people who would stop you from viewing an adult film may be back next year to complain about a book, or even a TV program. If you can be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you can be told what to say or think. Defend your constitutionally protected rights - no one else will do it for you. Thank you."

<comment><USER18> A website owner's right to choose what to publish is a _more important application_ of the first amendment than anyone else's right to force you to publish their speech.

If you disagree, I command you to post this post on _your_ twitter. If you don't, you're censoring me.

<comment><USER19> This argument has been made back and forth many many times. Private property rights vs. privatization of public spaces. Quantity becoming quality. Etc.

Surfice to say that when a corporation controls more "territory" than most state governments, when a very small number of corporations control the vast, _vast_ majority of communication channels, the rules must change to maintain the access of the people to the new public square.

<comment><USER20> It's trying to solve the wrong problem. If there's a monopoly, it should be busted. Not declared a new government agency.

<comment><USER21> IMO, the problem is that some fields are natural monopolies. This has long been known to include things like electric utilities, water, etc. I don't think anybody but the most crazy extreme libertarians objects to these types of companies being heavily regulated by the Government. The question is, should this apply to internet companies, and how?

It is a bit tricky. I think there is a solid case that, once social networking companies get to a certain size, there is a dominating network effect that makes them sort of like natural monopolies. Thus I think there should be some kind of regulation of their behavior. Maybe not as strict as other types of natural monopolies, but I think they have too much power to be allowed to just do whatever their owners feel like.

<comment><USER22> One way to solve this would be to regulate only the largest platforms. So maybe this different kind of net neutrality only applies to Twitter/Facebook/YouTube, domain registrars, ISPs, large cloud providers and other significant privately-owned infrastructure, but not to every random bit player with no real market share.

Otherwise, what happens if the ISPs decide that, say, Net Neutrality cuts into their profit margins, so they're just not going to route traffic for the sites that are politically antagonistic to them right before the election?

Sure would be a shame if something happened to that site of yours, huh?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wish people would take the time to read 1st Amendment case law.

I think people would be shocked, even when the court get it wrong, the justices and opinions explore the subject in a depth that laymen will go their entire lives never exploring or understanding. Plus the bonus of it being maybe one of the more interesting areas of law factually.

Some of the major topics I suggest looking at/googling:

-1st amendment restricts the government from infringing speech Not private parties (I.e. you say something about my wife/kids I can shut your mouth, maybe I will face criminal/civil penalties for damaging your face, but not for chilling your speech)

-the marketplace of ideas (perhaps my favorite concept in free speech)

-government can restrict Speech based on time/location (i.e. require permits for using public spaces or limiting your access to public space such as closing a park at night and arresting you for trespassing preventing you from distributing your speech when/where you want)

-"Fuck the draft" (just lol) vs burning draft cards

-obscene speech (porn - Imagine the justices Getting together with their popcorn and watching porn together...they still can't define it, "but they know it when they see it")...this extends to child porn too

I'll leave it there, have fun!

<comment><USER7> Free Speech != 1st Amendment.

Free Speech is a _principle_ that allowing opposing viewpoints is the cornerstone of political discourse and a functioning democracy. Only through discussion, debate, and argument, do we avoid what all governments are designed to avoid - violence.

The 1st Amendment is a Law that is meant to protect the people from restrictions on freedom of speech from the government. It if not the totality of the idea.

In the same way that the government regulations on clothing imports are not a national dress code.

The dangerous territory we have recently waded into is that the younger voters are so emotionally tied to their political ideas within their bubble that they cannot stand to hear discussions that do not agree with their existing world view - and are happy to see violence used to silence dissent.

It is the _principle_ of Freedom of Speech that is under attack - not the 1st Amendment.

<comment><USER23> Well of course in addition to free speech the 1st amendment includes other rights such as freedom of religion (Separation of church and state), freedom of the press, right to assemble and right to petition the government for grievances. In its plain wording "the government shall make no law...prohibiting free speech..." but people get hung up on that when we know government can in fact pass all sorts of laws that limit free speech and in my experience I can get even the most die hard "absolutists" To agree certain speech should be illegal (this typically stems from the fact people don't understand what "speech" is from a legal context).

I stand by what I said, people should read the case law.

While you say the danger is young people being emotional in their bubble, I think you will find every generation says something similar about the next generation.

Why I encourage people to read the case law is because it provides historical context for these rights and how the law is actually applied. I think one of the biggest dangers, is failure to educate ourselves especially learn our own history (history of our laws or otherwise). The point of studying history is so we can hopefully avoid the mistakes of our past...yet as history suggests we will continue to neglect history and make the exact same mistakes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> You can say whatever you want: you should also expect to take heat from non- like minded people. At some point the free speech concept transitioned to "I should be able to say whatever I want with no consequences". The First Amendment is very specific:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Says nothing about any one else's responses to your words.

<comment><USER25> Free speech is important even in contexts where the First Amendment doesn't apply. The First Amendment is important because free speech is important, not the other way around.

I agree with this:

        You can say whatever you want: you should also expect
        to take heat from non-like minded people.

But I think this misrepresents the view of free speech advocates (it certainly misrepresents my viewpoint):

        At some point the free speech concept transitioned to
        "I should be able to say whatever I want with no
        consequences".

On the contrary, I think a lot of left-authoritarians who want to censor right-leaning speech are the ones touting this viewpoint. It's not the pro- free-speech crowd that wants no consequences for what they say, it's the anti- free-speech crowd. One of the consequences of stating your opinion publicly is that people will disagree with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The problem people have with free speech is the way it is used to legitimise bad behaviour. Creating a hostile environment for people - questioning their equality and validity - is not a reasonable moral choice. Being ostracised for one's awful choices isn't unfair or unexpected, or indeed unprecedented. Most people complaining about free speech are essentially campaigning for their right to be cruel and impolite in polite society.

<comment><USER25> That's a total mischaracterization of people who believe in free speech.

I don't think people should say bigoted things. But more importantly, I don't think people should _think_ bigoted things.

If you shame and ostracize people into not _saying_ bigoted things, but you don't solve the _thinking_ bigoted things problem, then all you've done is hide the problem, and you're suddenly surprised when a bigot gets elected to the White House or a bigoted police officer murders someone and gets away with it (again). Censored bigots don't magically stop being bigots--they just go form their own communities.

The way you get people to stop _thinking_ bigoted things is not by silencing it, it's by explaining to people why they're wrong. Even if you don't change the mind of the bigot you're talking to, you might change the mind of someone else who is listening to or reading what you say.

I'm not campaigning for people's right to be cruel and impolite. I'm campaigning for conversation that brings the truth to light and improves our collective thinking.

And to be clear, I'm also not saying that free speech means you should have no consequences in any context. If you say something racist at work you should absolutely be fired. I'm saying that we need places where people can say racist things so that those racist things can be confronted with the truth.

<comment><USER27> > If you shame and ostracize people into not saying bigoted things, but you > don't solve the thinking bigoted things problem, then all you've done is > hide the problem

This is not true. It does not solve that person thinking bigoted things, but it does help prevent them from turning other people into bigots. A huge number of people have fallen into terrible thought patterns after being exposed to these ideas through youtubers and faux academics. If there are fewer people with PhDs after their name willing to lend a veneer of legitimacy to defeated ideas then there will be fewer people drawn into the trap.

<comment><USER9> > but it does help prevent them from turning other people into bigots

This is the same as saying "I can't logically defeat their points so I will use underhanded censorship tricks". I would not care so much if it was only about actually bigoted things but it seems to include everything that goes against what the average SV google engineer believes.

At the same time you are punishing these that are interested in seeing what the censored side thinks as well as the points against it.

<comment><USER27> > "I can't logically defeat their points so I will use underhanded censorship > tricks"

You _can 't_ logically defeat bigots in a way that actually matters to them. If this were the case, then there wouldn't be bigots. The existence of systemic racism is not controversial among experts and hasn't been for a long time. Yet people insist on arguing about it forever. They don't care that logical arguments dismantle their beliefs.

Because it is a trick. It is a denial of service attack.

<comment><USER25> > You can't logically defeat bigots in a way that actually matters to them.

The goal of public debate is never to persuade the person you're debating, it's to persuade those watching the debate. Sometimes you can persuade the person you're talking to, but that take a lot more sophisticated understanding of the other person than you're going to achieve if you simply dismiss them as illogical.

> If this were the case, then there wouldn't be bigots.

That simply doesn't follow. Bigots _do_ change their minds sometimes, slowly over time.

> The existence of systemic racism is not controversial among experts and > hasn't been for a long time. Yet people insist on arguing about it forever. > They don't care that logical arguments dismantle their beliefs.

It's not that they don't care, it's that they don't agree that they are logical.

Keep in mind, also, that logic is only as good as the evidence you feed into it. Logic in a vacuum of evidence is completely useless. People don't always change, but they do sometimes change.

Also, keep in mind that censorship isn't the only poor strategy the left is employing here. Sure, getting rid of censorship and just arguing with people won't fix things, but that's in part because the argumentation of the left is crap too. The cry of many people on the left these days is, "Come to the left, we'll call you a racist!" and they're surprised when this actually pushes people _to the right_. People think minds can't be changed because they've never actually learned how to change minds.

The truth has power. If you want people to stop supporting cops, for example: show them this video[1] and then point out that the murderer in that video now receives $2500/month in medical pension because he claims PTSD from the murder he committed. Try it out! It's not hard to science this for yourself.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBUUx0jUKxc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBUUx0jUKxc)

<comment><USER27> > The goal of public debate is never to persuade the person you're debating, > it's to persuade those watching the debate. Sometimes you can persuade the > person you're talking to, but that take a lot more sophisticated > understanding of the other person than you're going to achieve if you simply > dismiss them as illogical.

Debate is not the only mechanism to do this. Why invite a bigot on stage? Wouldn't a better option be to have academics give lectures on the topic? What use is there to have somebody sitting next to them interjecting?

<comment><USER25> A staged debate is a curated event. There might be strategic reasons to invite a bigot on stage, but you're certainly not obligated to--in general I think putting reasonable voices next to ignorant ones gives an air of legitimacy to ignorance and drags down the reputation of both the reasonable voices and the curators. So yeah, don't invite a bigot on stage.

Curation is not the same as censorship. Curation is a whitelist where by default you don't let anyone speak, and choose specific people to give voice to--the choice of who to give voice to is in itself an act of free speech which I think should be protected. Newspapers, TV news, staged debates, etc. are all curated venues. I absolutely support boycotting Fox News and its sponsors, for example, because they're a curated venue which has decided that bigotry is the message they want to put out into the world. If the Mother Jones or ProPublica started hiring bigots to write their articles, I'd support boycotting them too--these are curated news sources and I donate to them because I expect them to limit their content to quality content.

A curated venue is different from a communications platform where the default position is to let everyone speak. Letting someone speak on a communications platform doesn't lend legitimacy to their opinions: everyone knows that any idiot can post on Facebook. Censorship is adding a blacklist: the default position is anyone can speak, but you've decided to make an exception to that rule.

The topic of this subthread isn't curated debate in curated venues, it's censorship of debate on social media.

If you want to argue that Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/Instagram/YouTube/HN should be curated venues where only academics are allowed to post on topics they are experts in, then start by showing me which credentials you feel qualify you to debate about human rights. If you actually believe what you're saying, then follow it to its logical conclusion and self-censor.

To be clear, I'm _not_ actually saying you should self-censor--I don't believe that social media should be limited to academics. I'm merely pointing out that you aren't following your own principles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> >The series of studies suggest that cognitive ability is related to support for freedom of speech for groups across the ideological spectrum.

It's an interesting result and I have a lot of questions that I think are mostly because I don't understand how studies like this work, but that's kinda a laundry list to throw at a short article like this ;)

I do wonder if put to the test if those conclusions hold up. Introduce fear, or just personal interests and does that support go out the window?

I suspect that there might be a difference from general support for freedom of speech... and a willingness to also support some contradictory policies / points of view at the same time when fear, or personal interest are at play.

History is full of ideology turned to something else entirely.

Granted I don't know how you'd test that reliably in any way.

<comment><USER29>
      I do wonder ... Introduce fear, or just personal interests and does that support go out the window?

Anecdotally, my view of 2A rights completely flipped once I saw police attacking people in their homes and property for no other reason than filming protests.

I used to (naively) think the police and government were generally passive to citizens even when politically differing. It's amazing how quickly the illusion can be shattered.

<comment><USER30> What's the logic here? How does police brutality and 2A relate?

Police are aggressive and corrupt, so you get a gun, so...?

<comment><USER29> Why do the police carry weapons when violent criminals are aggressive and corrupt?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The simple truth is that most people like "free speech" as long as they agree with it.

</comment><comment><USER32> I would find interesting if someone conducted a study, where they asked if the participant supports freedom of speech for various categories and their perceived ability to argue pro and con in that category, if it was possible to test their argumentation ability in said categories it would be also insightful. Mostly I suspect that while people hold strong beliefs, they don't have a deep enough understanding of it to rationalize why and argue if someone disagrees with them. In addition it would be interesting to know the participants readiness to enter an argument if they support the freedom of speech in each category.

</comment><comment><USER33> " _Cognitive Ability Is Related to Supporting Freedom of Speech for Groups Across the Ideological Spectrum_ "

I don't have access to the paper. How do they define "cognitive ability"?

</comment><comment> seph-reed Ethos, pathos, logos :: social credit, intuition, logic. Each a very reasonable means of surviving, but ethos is by far the strongest. If you fit in which a bunch of things that aren't dead, you'll probably not die. Something about this play-style seems to result in more than just fitting in, but also hating those who don't. If freedom of speech is your ability to say divergent things, being hated for being different is a problem.

</comment><comment><USER34> The speech that should absolutely be abridged is using the phrase "Freedom of Speech: A Right" seemingly without referring to the U.S. constitutional right, and also without defining what you mean otherwise. The penalty for violating this law shall be that you have to read every single forum comment about your abstract.

<comment><USER25> Communication is not a one-person activity--some of the burden of communication lies on the listener/reader/etc. If you have questions about what someone means, ask them. It's unrealistic to demand that people somehow foresee your questions and answer them without you having to ask.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The contents of the article has nothing in common with the title.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm not sure heterodox academy is worth the paper it is printed on.

The article itself attempts to make some kind of vague argument about cognitive ability and social positions. Any time a blogger trots out cognitive ability as one of their primary evidentiary threads, you can be fairly certain that the rest of what you read will largely consist of confirmation bias from the privileged class.

<comment><USER37> Just this morning I was thinking about the increasing volume of propaganda, trolling, and heterodox/'edgy' I've been seeing on HN in the last couple of months. Now here we are with a piece suggesting that cognitive superiority or inferiority relates to subjects like "homosexuals", "communists", "anti- american Muslim clergy", and it's on the front page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Imo, it's an unalienable right for everybody, but that doesn't mean cancel culture won't #$(% on you for speaking your belief. However, sometimes you have to say what you believe in even if you know you are going to be shamed for it. Perhaps this would be a good time for us all to go re-read The Scarlet Letter, eh?

<comment><USER39> Ugh. Can we stop with the cancel culture narrative? When people say objectionable things, there may be consequences. This unhinged proposition that you should have an invincibility force field around you when you spit out obnoxious shit is absurd.

If you say something people don't like, they may want nothing to do with you. They may want nothing to do with people associated with you. Those people may be your employer. Your employer may not agree with the stuff you say AND you're harming them. Thus, your relationship is terminated.

Nobody is being victimized here. Everyone's rights are being upheld and maintained. If my employer hated this comment enough to fire me, then onward I go to another employer, or onward to destitution. If I'm not confident that what I say is mainstream enough that I could be fired for it, then I shouldn't say it, or I should accept that I'm not mainstream enough and thus can't attempt to live in mainstream society.

Arguments against "cancel culture" fundamentally mean that people should be forced to have a relationship with me they may not want even if I'm an objectionable, reprehensible twat, and that's too bad for them, because my position is somehow more important than their right to freely associate. I reject this utterly.

<comment><USER40> I reject your rejection.

Cancel culture is terrible because the goal is to destroy people who hold unpopular beliefs. It not enough to refute the belief. The transgressor must be punished with the full fury that internet-enhanced social pressure can bring to bear. The goal is to punish and destroy.

Shaming and social opprobrium can work in a community where there's interaction between the parties. This also allows for grace and restoration. It doesn't work in the global twitter-verse.

Civilization is the ability to live in peace with people that aren't like you - you may disagree with them, disapprove of them, or dislike them, but you don't seek to destroy them. We seem to be losing it.

<comment><USER39> Destroy, or show there are ramifications for speech?

I find the "I can say whatever I want, it's just words" to be an immature stance to hold. Words hold power, and power can be used or misused. We know words hold power; otherwise protesting wouldn't work, MLK's letters from a birmingham jail wouldn't matter, even the very constitution itself would be pointless.

So if that power is being applied to harm people, there needs to be a check on that. I fully agree it isn't the government's role to play that part; it's society's full, universal, democratic decision what to do with it.

The final result is "if you say something so upsetting that you can get a large group of people to use their own words and freedom to associate to harm you in return, then that's on you". If you don't like the worst that the so- called "cancel culture" response can bring you, then the solution is relatively simple: choose your words carefully and _own them_.

<comment><USER41> > it's society's full, universal, democratic decision what to do with it.

That might be fine, if that were the way it worked. In practice, though, it seems more that it's a minority forming a howling mob that brings the heat.

> "if you say something so upsetting that you can get a large group of people > to use their own words and freedom to associate to harm you in return, then > that's on you"

I prefer the legal system to mob "justice".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> In 2020, free speech is most often attacked under three false premises:

1\. "It's a private company, they can deplatform whoever they want!"

This is obviously true to an extent, but as all communication is increasingly dominated by a few private companies, leads to a situation where free speech is effectively stifled not by the government but by an oligarchy. This is especially true since internet infrastructure like DNS is implemented by private companies.

2\. "It's freedom of speech, not freedom of consequences of speech!"

Clearly this argument is absurd and wrong, yet I've seen it get touted nonetheless, notably in an XKCD comic. If the government threw you in jail for political speech, and defined that as "allowing free speech but simply having consequences of that speech", most would agree that's not true free speech. Yet people accept that flawed logic in other contexts.

If you can lose your livelihood for a political opinion, you don't really have free speech, yet that's increasingly the precedent set by Silicon Valley as a reasonable consequence of unpopular political opinions.

3\. "We can't be tolerant of intolerant opinions!"

Again, perhaps some truth here in the most extreme cases, yet increasingly we label all but the most anondyne opinions as intolerant. The range of acceptable opinions gets narrower every day, and the consequences for diverging from it increasingly harsh.

To me it's an objective reality that there's a massive attack on free speech in 2020, especially in places like Silicon Valley and primarily by people who identify as "the left", usually using the fallacious arguments noted above.

<comment><USER43> > If you can lose your livelihood for a political opinion, you don't really > have free speech, yet that's increasingly the precedent set by Silicon > Valley as a reasonable consequence of unpopular political opinions.

A hypothetical for you. Let's say you're married to someone. That someone later down the line turns into a massive jerk, frequently spouting obscenities at you and has changed politically. If you divorce them, are you violating their right to freedom of speech? Should we as a society not allow divorces lest they censor someone's opinion?

<comment><USER44> I have no issue with people being fired or divorced for spouting obscenities. I would certainly think poorly of someone who filed for divorce because their spouse changed politically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Alternative causality chain:

1\. The more politically powerless you feel, the more you support free speech in order to protect speech you agree with.

2\. More intelligent people are more likely to land in less politically powerful ideologies, just due to exploring more of them.

The graph showing that "Communist" most favor free speech and "Military" supports it least seems to be consistent with a political power gradient.

A prediction of this explanation: As power shifts, e.g. as leftists come to dominate academia, the group gaining power will tend to favor free speech less, and visa versa.

<comment><USER46> Totally agree, in many academic settings this is already a thing (and I say it as a social democrat!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Free speech will and always will be about not taxing speech. The government has no right to tax speech.

</comment><comment><USER48> WHAT EXACTLY IS FREEDOM OF SPEECH?

My view on freedom of speech is different from most I found, but I think it's the one that is consistent and stays true to actual definitions of words.

Human freedoms are about what the human can do. Right to bear arms. Right to speak. Right to assemble. And so on. That is how the Bill of Rights seems to intend it.

Note that the freedom to physically say anything and not get carted away is _different_ than that of an organization.

Corporations may be "persons" for the purpose of suing and being sued in court etc. But when it comes to freedom of speech, it is quite another level of indirection!

When Sinclair TV buys a bunch of local stations, and makes them say something, they are not really free. They are saying whatever they are being told to say:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2018/04/02/598794433...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2018/04/02/598794433/video-reveals-power-of-sinclair-as-local-news- anchors-recite-script-in-unison)

But here is the proper description: freedom of speech is different than _access to a megaphone that an organization with a large audience gives you_.

And I prefer that our news and announcements would be run more like Wikipedia than FOX, CNN or even Twitter. Because the latter tear apart our society. News outlets were disrutped by the Internet so they adjusted by locking in an audience by choosing a side and publishing clickbait. And social media in their race to the bottom for advertising dollars herded us into echo chanbers around this content. The current political fever pitch is NOT an accident or a plan by any one person. What can we do instead? Run it like Wikipedia.

Think of concentric circles. The smallest circle is what certain groups of mutually distrusting / disagreeing experts / pundits discussing things. They are the ones to go and publish dissenting opinions. This is analogous to the Talk page on Wikipedia.

This circle of people get a notification every time that one of them posts, so they can add their 2 cents.

Then once enough of them have weighed in, the next level is opened up — which is either the public or an intermediate circle of fact-checkers or news organizations.

I do not think the public should get stuff unfiltered from the megaphone of anyone with a Twitter audience of 50,000 or a podcas audience of 40,000. Sure, we are not used to this kind of society, but it is NOT a FREEDOM of speech issue. It is an issue of access to megaphones.

The current understanding of "freedom of speech" leads to contradictions and idiosynchrasies where one side claims that Facebook, Twitter are private platforms and aren't covered under the Bill of Rights, while another side says that they are larger than many countries and are directly distributing speech on their platform. Whether these are "online countries" or not and whether they are subject to the US Bill of Rights because they are located here or operate here is up for debate. But under my definition the forced restructuring of how information is disseminated to wider and wider audiences wouldn't be a Freedom of Speech issue.

PS: By the way, what I described is how news desks used to be run, with various editors being involved before things went to press.

<comment><USER45> 1A: "Congress shall make no law ... prohibiting the freedom of speech, or of the press;"

EGreg: "it is NOT a FREEDOM of speech issue. It is an issue of access to megaphones."

Are you saying that the "freedom of speech" part is a good idea, but "freedom of the press", phrased as a "access to megaphones", is the problem?

<comment><USER49> The freedom of the press is the right of like minded people to print what they want (barring slander and libel). It is not a requirement that those like minded people print content they object to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting and totally tone-deaf timing for this article, given the current climate of the world ("Post a black square on your social media or you are committing violence with your silence.")

</comment><comment><USER50> Speech isn't free. It's a form of action and actions are constrained. As the West changes from a Christian to a post-Christian culture, one set of blasphemy laws are being replaced by another set. One set of words you can't say in public by another.

Thoughts, on the other hand, are _sometimes_ free. That's one reason the promulgation of despair is continually attempted: to shut down free thought.

</comment><comment><USER51> The funny thing is, the shift of accepting the existence "unacceptable" speech hurts liberal speech more than conservative speech (I looked at the numbers from [https://www.niskanencenter.org/there-is-no-campus-free- speec...](https://www.niskanencenter.org/there-is-no-campus-free-speech- crisis-a-close-look-at-the-evidence/)). Considering how people chasing cancellings on twitter tend to hold extreme opinions themselves, they actively contribute to the thinning of the ice they're walking on.</comment>