Again, ignoring and censoring aren't the same thing.
Part of the reason I come to HN is that I know there are entire classes of content and ideas that I will not be exposed to at all so I don't have to waste brain cycles on sorting them.
If I wanted to provide a similar experience, targeting a different narrative, and then worked to create my own safe platform, would you disagree with that?
"Ignoring" is just choice. And that concept can either promote or extinguish fair and free communication.
I assume you and I share similar political beliefs. Call it censorship, or call it "choice", it ia clear today not all people have fair and free access.
If the government uses its power to extinguish speech (or to burden channels through unfair promotion of counter ideas), then that is censorship. And that is a problem we should all want to fix.
Works the same way with government. The "I am not aware of ..." is a great trick for when your organization is intentionally silod. The folks who get subpoenaed are left out of detailed info. It's a complete non-statement.
I could bring up examples across both sides of the isle. It's all a big game.
That was my experience too. There is/was no formal standard for creating themes, just an empty dir (which they consider a feature). Even if they had one or two "official themes" that would have helped tremendously.
Instead we spent a week researching how popular 3rd party themes did things, and made a hybrid. Then we moved away completely. I really wanted it to work for us and we were so close. Hugo is so fast and is brilliant on a couple of things.... but barely missed.
I can't remember exactly but with what we were doing we were going to be heavily dependant on their Scratchpad, which felt like a hack. It's all just hacks, and they like it. Lack of solid conventions, and they LOVE it.
In the U.S. we used to collect palm/foot prints on every child within a few days of birth. Newborn fingerprints are difficult to collect, as skin is very delicate. Now we require DNA collection at birth.
With my youngest I found a clever way to "opt-out". Unfortunately at my child's 6 month pediatric appointment at a private clinic, the nurse charged in and demanded a sample to send in on the spot. She said they couldn't proceed with any services unless they sent the card in, as their license would be revoked unless doing so.
In my state you can REQUEST to have the collection card destroyed after 6 weeks, and before 18 years. But they do not guarantee it gets done. Which is just for the collection card. They make sure to "transfer but not sell" the samples to separate entity between that time, which keeps a copy and digitizes it.
This is bizarre and should not be legal. There is definitely not any public awareness of this practice.
Increasingly people are aware of the very real implications of allowing the government and insurance agencies to have your data. Your genes are your data
I remember reading about a country doing DNA collection of every single person born, since the 80s or something like that, leading to that country now sitting on the most extensive DNA database of its kind. I can't remember which country it was though. Searching for "most extensive DNA database" and similar just leads me to various voluntary databases from the US, but I think this database I'm thinking about was involuntary, and every single person in the country is basically registered in it.
California destroys the newborn's blood sample when the parents ask [0], but their privacy policy says that sometimes they don't do it [1]:
> You have a right to ask the Newborn Screening Program not to use or share your or your newborn’s information and/or specimen in the ways listed in this notice. However, we may not be able to comply with your request.
This is the worst thing about Signal, IMO. I want to use old phones as backup communication devices (wifi) but can't natively use the software that way.
Authenticator apps, and SMS help them derive you have identity -- which is more secure for them and you. Hardware token via WebAuthn (etc) is only more secure for you.
When they say "for the sake of security" they mean for them too.
There's a reason they want you to verify using one of the first two methods first.
> Authenticator apps, and SMS help them derive you have identity
How do they do that?
TOTP (i.e. authenticator apps) is a simple algorithm where the value is derived from a secret key and current time. It certainly doesn't verify anything about you.
Just technically it makes no sense. WebAuthn is a great technology that addresses many privacy concerns, but once they had an excuse collecting phone numbers they don't want to stop. Even though it's not the most secure method. Google, and many others are the same way.
2FA is often used as an excuse to obtain more PII from people, and to verify your identity, as a whole. Most businesses want to match logins to individuals, not roles. And that's what 2FA provides them.
Sorry you're so glum. Buy a Tesla. It'll put a smile on your face.
-Space access is leading the world. Satellites bring freedom, access, and peace.
-Cars are the safest, fastest, and smartest you can drive.
-Tunnels solve waaaay more problems than they create. Hyperloop isn't so much an 'active' project, see tunnels.
-Robots are extension of AI work for self driving.
-Brain project will help those with physical disabilities, and learning.
-Solar roof and battery at home is wicked cool and useful.
I'm leaving stuff out. Don't know if they take a loss on their cars, but if so that's very common for hardware manufacturers.
I'm not an Elon apologist by any stretch, but you have objectively bad takes here. I can only imagine you just don't like his personality.
Are his companies not leading in Space access? Clean energy? Transportation? Maximizing life? Fun.
The guy is a workhorse He innovates at every turn. He hires the best, and expects the best. He has done a marvelous job incentivizing great engineering, science, and research. Their goals are lofty. He thinks long-term. His teams are largely motivated for the right reasons, and he helps make many of his employees very wealthy.
His intentions are good. He's an environmentalist. He loves Earth. He loves people. He's positive and optimistic for the future. He can be abstract, artistic, and goofy.
From our perspective, he's rarely wrong, and when he is, he owns it. Is he perfect? Hell no. But he accepts responsibility. He engages with the public, and his fans.... and his haters.
One thing is for sure so far, people who bet on him win.
We'd be so lucky to have Elon lead a communication/social platform.
This is a little silly. I returned a Model 3 after they told me I'd have to wait months to get body defects repaired. These were defects that were apparent within 2 days of having it. They refused to simply swap the car out. For a little while it seemed unclear that they were going to repair it at all... just abysmal service.
> I'm not an Elon apologist by any stretch
I'm sorry, but you really really are (and that's fine, people like what they like). You're practically fawning over him in this comment.
> We'd be so lucky to have Elon lead a communication/social platform.
I think the opposite. He is in fact an excellent physicist. Like Nikola Tesla if Nikola Tesla both cared more about money, though he did a lot; and was better at getting money; and critically, if he had a predecessor who got fucked he could learn from (hence the name of the company, and why I say "Nikola Tesla" instead of "Tesla", because at this point the brand is bigger than its eponym). Only 99% sure about these statements, not absolute. And people remember Nikola Tesla because of the electricity, well he also designed the Tesla valve, a valve with no moving parts. Who knows what else.
So keep in mind while Elon Musk has a lot of monetary capital ie rich, and sure he's also still in the game of pushing the boundaries, he's not better than anyone. He's not better than you. So for there to be things he's that good at, to get to that level of success by the metrics most people are obsessed with, he has to be bad at other things. Well not exactly, it's not like skill points. In fact physics is highly analog, so that limits how good you can be at digital. They just naturally compete for neural resources.
So in fact, he's vulnerable to ML, he's been getting hacked by its promises for the longest time, Achilles heel. But you realize it cannot be any other way? You can't have an Iliad with no Achilles heel, it doesn't work as a story, like Superman without kryptonite, you can tell the story of Popeye without spinach but not Superman without kryptonite.
Like he sees demos and he's like "finally shit that actually works" and then it's like no, this is more shit that doesn't actually work, one-trick ponies, not even, one-trick PhD's disguised as ponies. Like he believes he needs PhDs because at some level he believes in credentials, when what he obviously needs are dropouts like him. Day one dropouts ideally. I mean if he wants inventors. If he wants to prove something is impossible, then yeah a PhD is the best. I don't know what the hell it is, maybe it's a recent thing, I believe in the idea of a PhD, I like people with PhDs.
I think it's because they're intelligent, they're not stupid enough to try to fly by flapping their arms. They don't do one single flap. No idea what happens if you flap your arms. Sounds stupid right? That's how aviation came into existence, guys would try flying off the Eiffel tower with a bird costume, splat. But then less stupid guys said, OK you can't use your arms, you need wings in a stronger structure, and that's why airplane wings are called wings. They're not actually wings, that's a really weird metaphor for birds' arms. And it was strictly necessary for guys to go splat for there to be gliders and all the rest.
The next step is a social media company that is (1) private (2) membership based (3) no reliance on huge ad contracts, just promoted content (4) can tell the difference between political opinion and hate speech (5) gets out of the way of legal public discourse.
It doesn't need to be web3. It just needs to be somewhat transparent and minimally auditable. Web3 doesn't know what web3 is yet. Most is just garbage, sorry.
