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Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

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Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#191

Post by davidivadavid »

reaperducer wrote: post #182
choxi wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the same logic young people use to justify not voting He provides some pretty good reasoning that ignoring the news and doing candidate research might be make you a more informed voter. Could you give an example of something you learned or read in the news that had a practical effect on your life?

Could you give an example of something you learned or read in the news that had a practical effect on your life? Today the news told me that a particular road I use to get to work is closed. Yesterday the news told me that a charity I usually contribute to, but forgot to this year, is falling short of its annual fundraising goal. Last week the news told me that a product I use has been recalled for safety reasons. Th…

I'm pretty sure none of those particular "news" would have been of any relevance to me, for example. I'm also pretty sure that when people talk about "news" they mean TV news bulletins or large press outlets — which wouldn't cover those things either.

However, a newsletter or a status update on social media seem like they would cover that type of information.

But they're not "news" in the common usage made of that word by any stretch of the imagination.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#192

Post by [deleted] »

claudiawerner wrote: post #189
erikpukinskis wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate speech is subjective though. For example saying “men aren’t women” is hate speech and will get you banned from Twitter. https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/hilltv/rising/42003...

Many harms are very subjective, the application of the law depends on many subjective factors, for instance, as does almost any account of justice. To say something is subjective (and imply therefore be discarded, or it is invalid) is rubbish thinking. Just as with many other phrases, "men aren't women" isn't simply a clear expression of fact, it has an ideological message or meaning behind it, just as 4chan's famous…

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#193

Post by qwerty456127 »

joshuakelly wrote: post #89

Knowing that this would happen eventually, I created an archival copy on GitHub soon after his death: https://github.com/jdjkelly/www.aaronsw.com I can hardly believe this was six years ago.

Cool. Nevertheless I feel like this should be upgraded to the 100%-offline-readable level (i.e. at least qblog.aaronsw.com should be mirrored too, so should be Twitter and Pinboard accounts preferably), converted to the epub format and distributed among commercial (for free or for charity), free and pirate ebook libraries. I'm actually surprised nobody has done this yet.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#194

Post by qwerty456127 »

sigi45 wrote: post #80
soneca wrote: post #20

His post "I hate the news" (0) was(is) very influential for me personally. It was seminal in what become a rather significant change in my habits and view of the world. I am now very conscious that news are entertainment, purely and simply. With the goods and bads of any other entertainment form. From time to time, while explaining my position to others (often seen as kind of radical), I refer this post. I hope it co…

But 'purley and simple' doesn't fit. News/consume gives you the zeitgeist. No popculture/news no zeitgeist. Also news doesn't work when no one reads them. So for him it works and for you also but it would probably remove an important organ if noone would spend any money on it. Yes we are far from it and yes there is too much news but his viewpoint is too simple.

Hacker News are [almost] enough.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#195

Post by pbhjpbhj »

chubot wrote: post #118
igneo676 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the ideas centered around summaries: 1. Weekly 2. Monthly 3. At the end of significant events Is there anything out there that provides this sort of service?

For Hacker News, there's https://www.hackernewsletter.com/ The idea is that instead of reading HN every day, you get an e-mail once a week. People apparently use it, because one article I wrote was selected for it, and I saw that it drove significant traffic. I'd like something for the nytimes and similar outlets too.

Aside: the UK there are a couple of satirical news quizzes (The News Quiz, Mock The Week, Have I Got News For You). At times I've got most/all my World news through those; it works quite well as a means to get hot-takes on major events.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#196

Post by vivekseth »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #193
joshuakelly wrote: post #89

Knowing that this would happen eventually, I created an archival copy on GitHub soon after his death: https://github.com/jdjkelly/www.aaronsw.com I can hardly believe this was six years ago.

Cool. Nevertheless I feel like this should be upgraded to the 100%-offline-readable level (i.e. at least qblog.aaronsw.com should be mirrored too, so should be Twitter and Pinboard accounts preferably), converted to the epub format and distributed among commercial (for free or for charity), free and pirate ebook libraries. I'm actually surprised nobody has done this yet.

Why don’t you do it?

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#197

Post by sDlEzAtyoNAz »

Vraxx wrote: post #169
csallen wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree, but probably the best way to value the importance of your vote is some equation where the biggest variables are the % chance of your side winning and the importance the issue at hand. The amount of voter suppression going on is, I think, an indirect way of estimating both of these things.

yeah, you're right about that, but given how difficult these things can be to actually measure in reality, I think an indirect measure is better than no measure at all (or a gut feeling). A lot of these races with heavy suppression were extremely close races, which obviously begs the question of how effective the voter suppression was and if it turned the tide (my money is on "almost certainly). It turned out my vote…

>but if just assumed that from the start I definitely wouldn't have gone out canvassing and trying to convince other people that their votes matter.

Why not? If you can sway the decisions of large numbers of people, that sounds like something that could have an impact on the outcome of the election. Would you feel badly that you were lying to them by telling them their vote mattered?

>If other people like me made similar decisions and didn't vote and didn't try to mobilize

Unless you make the decision to canvas/vote or not canvas/vote collectively, your own thought processes don't determine what those other people do, and wondering about what would happen if they did seems to me like some weird form of solipsism.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#198

Post by snowwrestler »

jondubois wrote: post #180
reaperducer wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One vote never made a difference. ...is the sort of thing said by people who don't watch the news and because of that are unaware of the number of manual re-counts that are done each election.

Getting an accurate count is not the issue; that's part of the show. The issue is that you only have one single vote out of hundreds of millions and the pool of candidates is ridiculously, ridiculously limited. In a fair system with over 300 million potential candidates, how likely would it be that a father and his son would both be elected as president (as was the case for George Bush junior/senior)? What about the…

Are you familiar with the personal history of Bill Clinton? Needless to say, his dad was not president.

I once looked up the personal histories of U.S. presidents. It was about 50% candidates who came from well-connected families (like both Bushes or FDR), and about 50% candidates who rose from seemingly humble beginnings (like Clinton, Truman, Eisenhower). It crosses party lines; both Carter and Reagan had humble beginnings.

Have you run for office yourself? You might feel differently about votes if you did. The field of candidates is only limited at the end. At the beginning, as you point out, it could be anyone.

And logically, a high volume of votes can't disprove the value of a single vote. If a single vote did not have any value, neither would a high volume of such votes!

But if a million votes are worth something, then each vote must be worth something too.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#199

Post by throwaway5250 »

ataturk wrote: post #102
l9k wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think the same a few years ago. But nowadays, with the state of politics, the spread of fake news and false narrative on social media... this is what we have. "they could have read an entire book about most subjects covered and thereby learned about it with far more detail and far more impact than the daily doses they get dribbled out by the paper" This is not what people do. This is applicable to 1% of the…

Just because WaPo and NYT are more verbose doesn't mean what they are feeding you isn't lies you know. Which of Trump's tweets do you take issue with? That the Mueller investigation is a witch hunt (it is)? That FBI agents were used to infiltrate Trump's campaign in an attempt to submarine it (they were)? That all of this behavior was highly illegal (it is). That foreign spy apparatus (5 Eyes) was engaged to spy in t…

At least lately, it's become pretty obvious that WaPo and NYT are feeding us crap on a regular basis. If you go look at the source materials, you'll realize that their "neutral" summaries aren't close to neutral, or aren't factual at all. Many times you don't even have to go to the source--the articles/headlines themselves aren't even internally consistent. ("Two men say they're Jesus, one of them must be wrong...")

Maybe it was always this way, and I never noticed.

Re: Tell HN: Aaron Swartz's website is offline

#200

Post by throwaway5250 »

soneca wrote: post #20

His post "I hate the news" (0) was(is) very influential for me personally. It was seminal in what become a rather significant change in my habits and view of the world. I am now very conscious that news are entertainment, purely and simply. With the goods and bads of any other entertainment form. From time to time, while explaining my position to others (often seen as kind of radical), I refer this post. I hope it co…

Generally I agree and aspire to this.

I do wonder, though, how I would keep track of the list of phrases I'm no longer allowed to say without being fired, shunned, or worse.

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