Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The tools I love are made by awful people

ankursethi.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 185 posts

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#171

Post by imgabe »

mrguyorama wrote: post #150
imgabe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If you determine a Tesla is the best car to fit your needs, there are far better ways to influence Elon's actions than depriving yourself of the best car for you. You could write your Senator / Congressperson to support laws that would curtail Elon's actions. You could speak publicly and propose better things than what Elon is doing or publicize how and why they're harmful, etc. Buying or not buying a Tesla is v…

>If you determine a Tesla is the best car to fit your needs, there are far better ways to influence Elon's actions than depriving yourself of the best car for you. As if "having the best car for you" is some sort of moral imperative or necessity, as if buying a less luxury vehicle is some sort of unthinkable option. >You could write your Senator / Congressperson to support laws that would curtail Elon's actions. Ah y…

You can vote for a different government. You can even campaign for a different government, or run for office yourself. It's this whole system we created for the people to control the government directly instead of changing buying patterns and hoping 18 levels away someone figures out you're trying to tell them to change a policy.

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#172

Post by imgabe »

ModernMech wrote: post #164
imgabe wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it can certainly influence other people's perception of you... I think what we all have to decide though is how much that matters to us, should we decide to buy one anyway. Yes, this is a concern, and it's a direct result of the phenomenon I'm talking about. There are violent, stupid people who will attack you because they think that buying a product means you endorse every political opinion every person who ma…

I agree with you, up until the point that CEO is a verified Nazi. If you see a man give multiple Nazi salutes behind the presidential seal, and your response to that is to hand over your money to him, are you a good or even neutral person? Not in my eyes, sorry. We have to have some standards in this society. Look around, fascism is flourishing. What you are doing now is what you would have been doing as a German in…

See I think the defining quality of the Nazis was the whole gas chambers and ovens thing and not so much the hand gestures.

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#173

Post by ranger_danger »

akho wrote: post #159
ranger_danger wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it's rare? Unless it's a personal project not meant for others, why would they not want more people to use it and get more popular? To me this is like people getting upset when their favorite indie band "sells out", even though their increased popularity is always seen as a much bigger positive than any potential downsides of the "sellout".

My impression is that people are motivated by solving problems and filling gaps in the existing landscape. Popularity is not a goal, usually. Why would it be?

More contributors, community building, more competition/innovation, I could think of many reasons... but not wanting something to become more popular is quite perplexing to me.

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#174

Post by ranger_danger »

dismalaf wrote: post #157
ranger_danger wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the desire for it to be the same as their previous OS I think most FOSS developers completely miss this point, assuming their goal is to get more people to use their software. Sure GNOME can be usable if you learn a different way, but you can't force everyone to do that. Not even most people. So I think if they really cared about doing what's necessary to get a lot more users, they're going to have to make their pr…

Apple literally built a 3 trillion dollar business on "Think Different". Now they're the slow, lumbering behemoth, but copying cheapens your brand. Copies only reinforce the idea that the original thing is valuable.

Nothing and nobody starts out original. We need copying to build a foundation of knowledge and understanding. Everything is a copy of something else, the only difference is how much is actually copied, and how obvious it is. Copying is how we learn. We can't introduce anything new until we're fluent in the language of our domain, and we do that through emulation.

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#175

Post by ModernMech »

imgabe wrote: post #172
ModernMech wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, up until the point that CEO is a verified Nazi. If you see a man give multiple Nazi salutes behind the presidential seal, and your response to that is to hand over your money to him, are you a good or even neutral person? Not in my eyes, sorry. We have to have some standards in this society. Look around, fascism is flourishing. What you are doing now is what you would have been doing as a German in…

See I think the defining quality of the Nazis was the whole gas chambers and ovens thing and not so much the hand gestures.

The defining characteristic of Nazis is authoritarian megalomania, something Musk has in spades. The hand gesture is how they identified themselves and professed their allegiance to the cause, something Musk has adopted. He's telling us who he is, we should listen.

The gas chambers are their most horrific deed, but Nazis were still Nazis before they gassed anyone. Therefore gassing does not define them.

The key to stopping Nazis is to do so before they get the gas chamber stage. If you let it get that far, you're too late. So you have to rely on other clues.

Nazi salute are about as oblique as you can get. They should have been a wakeup call.

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#176

Post by akho »

adastra22 wrote: post #168
akho wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In perfectly competitive markets noone makes a profit. As a result, capital is only allocated to imperfect markets, defined through various inefficiences: barriers to entry (monopolistic practices), information asymmetries (cheating), … If you regulate away bad practices, capital will flow elsewhere. The level of equity investment in IT (and the valuations) is largely due to bad practices; fixing that will take away…

> In perfectly competitive markets noone makes a profit Bit of an aside, but this is not true btw. Even in situations which most closely approximate what you describe, there is a positive, nonzero floor to profit taking. This is typically explained as the opportunity cost of allocating money, which is not just the known alternative investments you are giving up, but the unknown-unknown risks. Among certain schools of…

Zero economic profit for the marginal producer; i.e. investors could as well work for hire and buy an ETF. In the long run.

My point on regulation shifting capital allocation away from a sector stands, regardless of detail.

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#177

Post by computerthings »

imgabe wrote: post #172
ModernMech wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, up until the point that CEO is a verified Nazi. If you see a man give multiple Nazi salutes behind the presidential seal, and your response to that is to hand over your money to him, are you a good or even neutral person? Not in my eyes, sorry. We have to have some standards in this society. Look around, fascism is flourishing. What you are doing now is what you would have been doing as a German in…

See I think the defining quality of the Nazis was the whole gas chambers and ovens thing and not so much the hand gestures.

[dead]

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#178

Post by jmye »

imgabe wrote: post #147
jmye wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You personally know the conditions? You think I can only understand the conditions if.. what? I've directly worked at the factory? Published a peer-reviewed study? > You know that the workers would be better off not having the option of working in the Zara factory? That’s not the only other option and presenting it that way is intentionally dishonest. This entire line of thinking, as presented, is absolute sophism…

> You think I can only understand the conditions if.. what? I've directly worked at the factory? Published a peer-reviewed study? When do you think you understand the conditions? When you watch a TikTok video about it? When you read an artistic the Atlantic? When you watch a segment 60 minutes?

I guess I’m unclear why you don’t want to answer what I thought was a fairly simple question. Being evasive just looks like doubling-down on the dishonest way you’ve approached the entire conversation.

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#179

Post by ninetyninenine »

ethbr1 wrote: post #128
ninetyninenine wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is democracy so universally worshipped? Do they realize evil people with business interests ALSO participate in a democracy?

It's the worst system of government, except for all the other ones.

It’s not. There are centralist countries that do better than Americans.

I’m not criticizing democracy. It works and has good sides and downsides compared with say communism. But man does democracy like communism come with major downsides.

The question is why is democracy worshipped? Don’t worship it. It’s one side of complex 6 sided die. I was going to say one side of a coin but the situation is much more complicated than that.

Re: The tools I love are made by awful people

#180

Post by kcplate »

thefz wrote: post #108
lenkite wrote: post #12

I would love it if I could use Linux on the Desktop. Windows 11 feels a practical joke played on humanity by Nadella. The new Macbooks have amazing hardware, but the software quality has deteriorated considerably - even spotlight has bugs nowadays. However, I need basic sleep/restore to work on my laptop - and it feels like this is a Mars-mission-effort level problem for Linux to solve. If the Linux Software Foundati…

> The new Macbooks have amazing hardware Hm. You can't really repair or upgrade them, so you don't own the hardware at all. That's far from amazing.

I am on my third MacBook (recently acquired #3 this month), since 2008. None have needed repair or “upgrades”. I find that an average longevity of 8.5 years on a laptop is pretty amazing.

For what it’s worth, my wife is now using the one I just retired…so it ain’t dead or unusable yet.

Post reply on HN