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LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

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Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#681
post #542
post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your tone suggests you can't imagine any, which is... surprising. There are a vast array of things you can do to make driving safer, at the cost of making it less accessible and/or more expensive. Different countries already set their threshold differently - in the US, a driving test takes 20 minutes and everyone passes, while in the UK it takes 40 minutes and most people fail the first time. And lo and behold, 4 tim…

I guess I didn't ask the right question here. My issue is with the statement "the vast majority of accidents are due to bad policy". I would disagree with this statement. Some people occasionally make bad decisions when they drive or get distracted and cause accidents. How do you create a policy to keep people from occasionally getting distracted or making a risky choice. You can't. Most people who are driving in a r…

People are people everywhere, I'm sure plenty of drivers in e.g. Sweden get distracted or make bad choices - indeed Swedish road design policy is that road design should explicitly accommodate that. "Culture" is a lazy non-explanation, and wouldn't explain why e.g. the Netherlands had similarly high collision rates in the 1970s, but now doesn't - not because their culture is less American now (at least, I can't see how such a claim is at all defensible), but because of deliberate policy changes.

You can't prevent all distraction or all bad choices, but you can reduce collision rates by at least a factor of 20 or so with the right policy choices - we know because these other countries have done it. So I think it's fair to say that the majority of collisions are caused by not making those policy choices.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they have are all invalid opinions Exemplifying my point. Opinions cannot be "invalid", just like a persons taste cannot be invalid. You don't have to debate, just don't engage and problem solved. Others are interested in discussions even around subjects they don't agree on, let us continue being able to use the internet for those discussions.

Explain to me how thinking someone is lesser based off of who they love, what skin color they have, what gender they were born with or identify as is a valid opinion. Treating human beings as lesser for being themselves is an invalid opinion and not something worth debating the merits of. You seem to be thinking that tolerating bigotry is acceptable because the bigot who wants to infringe on other human beings basic…

> Explain to me how thinking someone is lesser based off of who they love, what skin color they have, what gender they were born with or identify as is a valid opinion

"noun: opinion; a view or judgement formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge."

Even if I disagree with the statement "The earth is flat", I cannot lie and say it's not an opinion, no matter how much I disagree with it. By invalidating peoples opinion by flat out saying "Your opinion is invalid", you miss any chance of having an honest conversation with them, maybe with a small chance of helping them understand a perspective they haven't considered before.

> Bigots do not deserve fair debate. Any opinion that is based off of infringing on others rights based off sex, gender, or skin color is invalid.

Let's say our conversation here was 40 years ago. Then with your mindset, "homosexuality should be illegal" would be what you would argue for, since that was the normally accepted opinion at the time. If I was to try to raise that conversation with you, you would have responded with "that's not a valid opinion, because I disagree so much with you". I'm saying, no matter how outlandish someones opinion sounds on the surface, it's always worth talking about, as otherwise we will never have any change in a good direction.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems we're already getting a bit heated, as neither you nor I mentioned something about "wholesomeness" but here we are. My point is not that alt-right opinions are wholesome, but rather that since they don't have a lot of places they can write their opinions without getting overrun by opposition, it's only natural they'll retract into properties where they can freely talk. For example: If you're of the opinion that…

Opinions based on bigotry or reducing rights or "legalness" of a person based off of who they love, what skin color they have, what gender they have are all invalid opinions. I should not have to debate a bigot and act like their views are worth debating.

Ironically, that's the defintion of a bigot.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these "facts" if their primary use wasn't to be woven into otherwise fictional narratives claiming to be coherent justifications of racism and homophobia. So, the same thing mainstream society has been doing for the last 6 years, just for different races and groups? If they criticized things like Outreachy (which literally discriminates people based on race and gender [1]) with the same energy that they criticize t…

Those are alt-right facts is just a defense mechanism for people to avoid confronting the contradictions in their own belief system. None of this is driven by reason, at least not the logic of the truth of the matters allegedly being examined. It's all about the logic of identity and social status. It is high status to believe in magical equality. It is low status to acknowledge human biodiversity. The idea of settli…

I agree with you, here is a good paper for hereditarianism if anyone wants to learn more https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188692...

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#685
post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War and terrorism was definitely made “more real” on LiveLeak than what you’d experience via the media or YouTube. I also found a real appreciation for other things: driving safely, worker protections, fire safety. These “boring” things take on more importance when you can see what happens when you ignore them. I don't think people should dwell on these morbid things. But seeing just one or two videos of, for example…

I remember seeing that video of American special forces being shot down in Africa. I did my due in the army myself, but thankfully I never saw combat. I do know a lot of vets, tho, and... they've all got PTSD and many of them are in a very bad shape. After seeing that video, I've been even more thankful. For me it serves as a clear warning that joining the army isn't all glory, even if you're fighting for "the right…

> I did my due in the army myself

I am not a native speaker of English so my apology if the question sounds strange: but does that mean that you feel that you owe your country some time spent in the army? ("I served in the army as everyone else" vs "I was employed in the army because of my choice").

Your last sentence rather points to the former but I wanted to make sure.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never came away thinking these things after reading those essays. The novel insights he presents in these essays deal with the West's ability to structure the narrative - via mass-media - of the Gulf War, resulting in the very real and senseless violence that occurred. All the while for the citizens of those Western nations though, none of the "Vietnam effect" was witnessed. In a sense, your post proves his point q…

No, you just have the same way of thinking as Chomsky, where you're so anti-imperialist that everything the US does is bad. Even when it's good. The invasion of Iraq can be bad and the gulf war can be good, there's no contradiction here. Go to Kuwait and ask someone who was alive during the gulf war, if they think it was about "the West's shameful leveraging of mass media to conduct abhorrent uses of overwhelming tec…

The Gulf War has nothing to do with Kuwait. We did not use overwhelming technological force on Kuwait. We used it on Iraq.

Once again, you demonstrate how warmongers cannot ever justify these abhorrent actions in the MENA region without invoking the highly dubious altruism of "we gotta punish the bad guys." The obvious need for the Gulf War from the 1990s warmonger point of view was the unprecedented post-Cold-War military buildup that was not only terribly unnecessary but has led to the loss of innumerable lives all over the globe thanks to our orgy of violence, ongoing to this day, called the War on Terrorism. But it did line the pockets of the shareholders of Raytheon and Boeing.

In a certain sense, this also helped line the pockets of Noam Chomsky, with whom I agree on very little beyond war. And even there, he's a complex thinker and I have many disagreements. Why would you try to pigeonhole and dismember my argument by placing me in the same category as Chomsky? You may think it's fine second-handing this issue and passing the buck to bigger names than yours, but instead of that, why don't you try arguing the merits of your ideas directly? Explain why millions of dead women & children were worth the "white lie" of the Gulf War being all about punishing the actions of Saddam in Kuwait?

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#687
post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Middle of the road separation barriers. Separate bike lanes, more like the sidewalks, not just painted lines on the car roads. Roundabouts instead of crossings and traffic lights. (Roundabouts force the drivers to slow down. And on average, saves time I think) More trains, buses, subways.

> Separate bike lanes, more like the sidewalks, not just painted lines on the car roads. That actually leads to more collisions at intersections. The reason that sidewalks work for pedestrians is because they move at walking speed. That means its easy for drivers to see them approaching an intersection (since they're a short distance away). Cyclists, on the other hand, move far faster than a walking pedestrian and ca…

Cycles can't as a general rule keep up with cars, unlike motorcycles. There's no integrating them with auto traffic whether or not you force them into the same roadway.

Part of good separate path design is planning the intersections to prevent the sort of crashes you're describing. I've seen some designs that make sense - it's rather interesting actually what nuances go into safe intersection design. I don't have any links available offhand though.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#688
post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Separate bike lanes, more like the sidewalks, not just painted lines on the car roads. That actually leads to more collisions at intersections. The reason that sidewalks work for pedestrians is because they move at walking speed. That means its easy for drivers to see them approaching an intersection (since they're a short distance away). Cyclists, on the other hand, move far faster than a walking pedestrian and ca…

Cycles can't as a general rule keep up with cars, unlike motorcycles. There's no integrating them with auto traffic whether or not you force them into the same roadway. Part of good separate path design is planning the intersections to prevent the sort of crashes you're describing. I've seen some designs that make sense - it's rather interesting actually what nuances go into safe intersection design. I don't have any…

> There's no integrating them with auto traffic whether or not you force them into the same roadway.

Roads can accommodate traffic moving at different speeds. For example, buses and trucks consistently move slower than passenger vehicles, especially up grades, but drivers of faster vehicles simply change lanes to pass them. This works on interstates where drivers of passenger vehicles are going 70 to 90 mph and commercial vehicles are going 40 to 60 mph.

Similarly, on a surface street with traffic moving anywhere from 0 to 40 mph, cyclists moving 0 to 20 mph can similarly integrate with traffic with faster drivers changing lanes to pass them.

> Part of good separate path design is planning the intersections to prevent the sort of crashes you're describing.

I've read about the designs, but the assumptions that they make do not really hold. For example, the typical "protected" intersection with curb extensions and an offset assumes that a motorist will look down the bike path to check for cyclists before exiting an intersection while moving at 10 mph. In reality, drivers aren't going to do that.

As I noted earlier, this principle works with pedestrians, because, while walking, they're moving around 5 feet per second, so seeing a pedestrian 10 feet away from the intersection is pretty easy for a driver making a turn since they really don't have to look down the sidewalk.

In contrast, a cyclist is moving anywhere from 15 to 30 feet per second. A cyclist that's two seconds away from entering an intersection can be anywhere from 30 to 60 feet away. This requires a drivers to actually look down the bike path, which isn't always going to occur. The cyclist may assume that the turning driver has seen them, but that assumption is in correct, and the cyclist will have to slow rapidly to avoid a collision.

Also, a lot of cyclists, when making use of such infrastructure, believe that they have pedestrian style right of way, meaning that they will do things like ride around the front of a turning vehicle believing that they'll stop to avoid a collision instead of just yielding.

A typical person takes about a second or so to react to something unexpected. At 10 mph, the motorist has already covered 16 feet, meaning that they would collide with a cyclist before they have a chance to even press the brake pedal.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#689
post #361

This is a big loss and it comes at a time where it will soon be more needed than ever. The last years has been brutal to "free information". Ever since Trump became president it seems a lot of people has begged the tech giants to filter and censor. And now they do. I remember early 2020 when rumors about a new virus in China came out. There were very little news about it. But on YouTube and Twitter you could find sca…

I have noticed that every time someone mentions China in negative light, they get downvotes. Interesting.

This comment breaks the site guidelines—more than one of them actually. Can you please review them? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The generalization you're making is far from true, and with most of the comments you're talking about it's pretty easy to see why they'd get downvoted.

Also - the GP comment was about media and censorship, not China, so if downvoters were reacting to the topic of the comment or to the point it was making, it more likely had to do with that. Downvotes on comments making controversial points about divisive topics are to be expected anyhow.

Re: LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online

#690
I'm surprise people say it had gory videos. I've being watching Liveleak for the last year. There were hardly any videos with violence and gore. The videos could be classified into 4 categories: traffic accidents, drunk/stoned people doing stuff, police cam recordings, industrial accidents (cranes, ships crashing etc.)
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