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Ask HN: What Happened to Larry Page?

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Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Larry Page?

#231

Post by ryantgtg »

jolux wrote: post #215
ryantgtg wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a both-sidesist. My comment has nothing to do with "both sides have good/bad people." We are currently in a situation where many on the left believe that the far right are pure evil idiots. And those on the right believe that people on the far left are... pure evil idiots. But - guess what - this isn't true.

The American left isn’t currently trying to turn the country into a single party state ruled by an autocrat. I don’t care if they’re idiots or not, but the right have abandoned respect and decency for their fellow citizens. I don’t want any of them dead, I just want free and fair elections in the country I love. It’s their media sources arguing for armed vigilantes to take to the streets to defend their beliefs.

The right-voting populace just wants abortions to be illegal. Everything else that's going on is collateral damage. I know - well, not a lot, but a couple handfuls of - Trump supporters, and 100% of them vote for him because of his purported policies on abortion (and they all lamely defend him on his other actions). I think people underestimate how many voters are single-issue voters, and that this is THE issue.

I want the things you want to - and I am very very left leaning. And I strongly disagree with your "their media" statement. I think many media outlets are contributing to a widening gap between the left and the right, because sensationalism and stupid articles sell. A single example from yesterday: I just read an NPR story that 260 out of 500,000 Sturgis attendees have come down with Covid. And they're trying to pitch that this is... a lot?

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Larry Page?

#232

Post by kinkora »

dddbbb wrote: post #71
paxys wrote: post #9

It was clear years ago that neither he nor Brin were interested running Google day-to-day anymore. I'm actually surprised that every billionaire doesn't do the same after reaching a certain point of success. Like..is calling the shots at Facebook really that big a deal that Zuckerberg spends his life being dragged from one mess to another, put in front of Congress every other week, criticized across the political spe…

He's still relatively young, and likely realises the near absolute power he holds over one of the largest companies in the world is not something he can get back once he gives it up. Also Gates, to put it in very uncharitable terms, has shown that it doesn't matter if you're seen as a hated, greedy CEO as long as you do enough philanthropy later in life.

my "insider" knowledge from the FB upper management is that Zuck is considering a future presidential candidacy so all of this congress stuff, dealing with political correctness, etc is great training wheels when he eventually gets into it. If you look at it from that lens, it makes sense right?

Disclaimer: note bunny ear quotes and like any 2nd hand information, there might be some stretched out truths attached to it.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Larry Page?

#233

Post by dang »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #8

It's funny how Larry Page very much seems to like his privacy these days... after taking it from everyone else.

Come on, please don't post this sort of baity, unsubstantive, generic swipe to HN.

When someone's pre-existing agenda starts showing up in arbitrary ways like this in every conceivably relevant thread, it becomes a moderation issue.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Larry Page?

#234

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #145
dddbbb wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's still relatively young, and likely realises the near absolute power he holds over one of the largest companies in the world is not something he can get back once he gives it up. Also Gates, to put it in very uncharitable terms, has shown that it doesn't matter if you're seen as a hated, greedy CEO as long as you do enough philanthropy later in life.

What would Bill Gates have to do to finally shed his reputation as a business man? Honestly, Gates seems like a pretty good guy from interviews he’s given and he’s doing something good with his money.

Key words: "seems like". Imagine you lived in the same area as Gates and every so often an acquaintance or colleague tells you a story of their encounter with Bill Gates. I have heard many of these stories. One is less likely to see such behaviour from him in public anymore if by chance he is seem in public and over the years one would expect his wife has "reigned him in". Most people are amazed by his interest in vaccines and Africa, and the foundation work, but how many know it is actually his spouse, formerly his employee at Microsoft,^1 who has the sincere interest in Africa and initially he just went along for the ride. When you have that kind of wealth, and so many others are dependant on your "generosity", naturally you have much more potential for control over what is written about you in the press. As such, the impressions you have from merely reading news stories are not exactly "organic", like hearing a story from someone you know. In the earlier days he had less control over what was written about him. Here is one from the archives that I think exemplifies Gates' personality quite well:

https://www.cringely.com/2013/02/25/accidental-empires-chapt...

https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19920227&slug...

Recently, he was attacked online by conspiracy theorists. This prompted an interesting response from him. Perhaps it has also caused some to look closer at how much "control" he can potentially exert on the media these days.

https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-fu...

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Larry Page?

#235

Post by dang »

tehjoker wrote: post #38

Notch is said to be a deeply unhappy person, or at least he was a few years ago. He also made a hard right-wing turn. https://money.cnn.com/2015/08/31/technology/minecraft-creato... https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/online-conduct-leaves...

Please don't put ideological flamebait into HN threads like this. It leads to ideological flamewars.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(We've detached this thread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24376865).

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Larry Page?

#236

Post by jolux »

ryantgtg wrote: post #231
jolux wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American left isn’t currently trying to turn the country into a single party state ruled by an autocrat. I don’t care if they’re idiots or not, but the right have abandoned respect and decency for their fellow citizens. I don’t want any of them dead, I just want free and fair elections in the country I love. It’s their media sources arguing for armed vigilantes to take to the streets to defend their beliefs.

The right-voting populace just wants abortions to be illegal. Everything else that's going on is collateral damage. I know - well, not a lot, but a couple handfuls of - Trump supporters, and 100% of them vote for him because of his purported policies on abortion (and they all lamely defend him on his other actions). I think people underestimate how many voters are single-issue voters, and that this is THE issue. I wa…

You claim to want the things I want, and yet you seem to think that reporting on a spike in COVID cases in a small state due to a large event is comparable to Tucker Carlson shrugging and saying “eh, you can’t blame him” about Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha? They’re not even within the same realm of discourse.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Larry Page?

#237

Post by chrisco255 »

maest wrote: post #206
chrisco255 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like to magnify fringe conspiracies while completely ignoring mainstream ones, when the mainstream ones are actually dangerous for democracy. The police power of government was leveraged against a political rival for explicit political reasons and no one has been punished for it. Extremely dangerous precedent.

Thta's not what was being discussed, though.

Yes, it's called a segue. Original topic was Larry Page and neither Q nor pizzagate have anything to do with him.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Larry Page?

#238

Post by ethbr0 »

ItsDeathball wrote: post #184
manjana wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure whether this holds much merit in reality as it is purely speculation, but I'd strongly suspect that a great deal of modern popular conspiracy theories are designed and initially propagated by PSYOP groups to influence and control certain aspects of reality for whatever intended purpose (that's kind of the essence or purpose of a PSYOP) - like for example, preventing Bill Gates' eliminating third world po…

I'm not saying you're wrong, but a conspiracy theory about a conspiracy to spread conspiracy theories is extremely meta and wonderfully ironic.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they don't want you to think they're out to get you.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Larry Page?

#239

Post by ethbr0 »

randcraw wrote: post #204
mistermann wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we had better basic education, presumably people would be able to understand how things work. Agreed, like the fundamentals of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, etc. Perhaps then we could rid the world of this widespread perception of clairvoyance (perception of knowing the thoughts of millions of other people, for example).

I think what's missing from education in the US isn't more depth or breadth of facts, but the ability to think independently and critically. We need to gain better awareness that if we're responsible for making an important decision, but we can't be bothered to become informed before making that decision, bad things will happen to us (and others who rely on us) that we could have avoided if we had taken responsibilit…

> I think what's missing from education in the US isn't more depth or breadth of facts, but the ability to think independently and critically

Absolutely. I've long thought a modern version of rhetoric is perhaps the most important class to mandate in a democracy.

At least one full semester of a teacher trying to lie or convince you of things using common approaches, coupled with an analytical study of what they are and how they work.

> We need to gain better awareness that if we're responsible for making an important decision, but we can't be bothered to become informed before making that decision, bad things will happen to us

IMHO, democracy is predicated on the ratio of informed_voters : total_voters. That ratio has never been 1, but it feels like it used to be higher.

I think the next version of democracy is going to use a pre-test of objective facts (so loaded!) to weight votes.

Re: Ask HN: What Happened to Larry Page?

#240

Post by Sebb767 »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #159
Sebb767 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because its a lot of work and risk. With such a high profile, controversial points quickly become a lot of trouble. Also, there's a lot of overhead with running and securing the site. So, why bother if you don't have anything interesting to say on there? They are big enough to have Wikipedia host their CV.

> there's a lot of overhead with running and securing the site Not really. Especially not if you have Google at your disposal.

It's surely possible, I don't meant to suggest otherwise . But still - why bother when you have nothing to say?

A personal website tends to serve as either self promotion or to voice your opinion. I don't think he needs promotion, so unless he wants to start blogging, it's only risk and timesink with no upsides.

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