Media Bias Fact Check: Hacker News • Hacker News Board

Re: Media Bias Fact Check: Hacker News

#71

Post by gcoakes » Fri, May 26, 2023, 6:58 PM UTC

jiggawatts wrote: post #65

gcoakes wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please point me towards someone using non-linux servers in a production environment? Besides naturally vendor locked developer tools (my company uses them to build Windows desktop software), I'm genuinely confused why someone would want Windows Server. Same is true for MacOS except my company definitely doesnt use them. Are you referring to BSD's? Or, maybe IOT or industrial things with sel4 (which doesn't se…

It's hard to tell if you're joking or not[1], but in a typical enterprise setting, easily more than half of all VMs will be Windows Server. At every large (>10K user) enterprise or government org I've worked at, there will be typically 1K-6K Windows Server virtual machines. First of all, there are hundreds of thousands of software vendors that have written Windows-only software. There's an enormous amount of inertia…

Not joking. Thank you for the perspective. I'm still unconvinced about ASP.NET + Microsoft SQL Server being superior to the other options available today. PostgreSQL or even sqlite seem like they would be superior for an internal-use app, if you were making the choice today. Maybe that's just my ignorance of ASP.NET talking, but from where I sit, Linux soundly won the server market.

Re: Media Bias Fact Check: Hacker News

#72

Post by flangola7 » Fri, May 26, 2023, 8:37 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #11

flangola7 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a perfect summary of it!

On what issues has the Overton window shifted right?

Transgender healthcare and transgender existence as a whole is a particularly overt and luminescent example. We have always been seen as weird, but for decades I could generally expect to be able to go to a doctor and have it covered by insurance. Now in some states the government and its police forces would imprison that doctor for providing treatment and imprison my wife for teaching in a K12 school. We didn't have a lot of explicit rights in the past but we also didn't have these kinds of massive targeting and demonization campaigns by elected officials.

Re: Media Bias Fact Check: Hacker News

#73

Post by daveoc64 » Sat, May 27, 2023, 3:24 AM UTC

revelio wrote: post #70

daveoc64 wrote: post #54

As someone from Europe, I'm quite surprised by this. HN is very far to the right by European standards, as even the Democrats are. That perhaps shows why "left" and "right" are overly simplistic labels.

The idea that all of Europe is highly left wing isn't really accurate. Recall that Switzerland, the UK, Ireland and even Russia are all countries in Europe. Anyway, pretty much every HN thread about anything Europe related will be full of top voted comments saying things like "Thank goodness for the wonderful EU regulating American companies, how ever would we survive without that?" and most of the comments will be a…

> The idea that all of Europe is highly left wing isn't really accurate. Recall that Switzerland, the UK, Ireland and even Russia are all countries in Europe.

Those countries are all very left wing in comparison with the USA.

Sure, the UK has a "Conservative" party in power, yet it is one that recognises that the overwhelming majority of the public supports universal public healthcare. It's also one that handed out hundreds of billions in support during the pandemic and has just handed out billions to the population to pay energy bills.

>For a different example go look at any discussion during COVID about lockdowns, vaccine mandates, masks etc. Libertarians were consistently flamed and flagged to death here, as was true on every other social media site.

There have been quite a few successful posts I've seen here that have had an anti-mask, anti-vaccine, or anti-lockdown theme. These continue to exist now.

Re: Media Bias Fact Check: Hacker News

#74

Post by naasking » Sun, May 28, 2023, 3:14 PM UTC

flangola7 wrote: post #72

naasking wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what issues has the Overton window shifted right?

Transgender healthcare and transgender existence as a whole is a particularly overt and luminescent example. We have always been seen as weird, but for decades I could generally expect to be able to go to a doctor and have it covered by insurance. Now in some states the government and its police forces would imprison that doctor for providing treatment and imprison my wife for teaching in a K12 school. We didn't have…

> We have always been seen as weird, but for decades I could generally expect to be able to go to a doctor and have it covered by insurance.

This might be a good example, but I admit that the insurance situation in the US is so bizarre that I have no intuitions on this, re: insurance covering gender transition. Is insurance no longer covering it or something? If so, is this a legislated restriction?

It is true that states are banning this kind of care for minors, but consent around minors is pretty tricky, and some people like to ignore the nuances for simple soundbites.

It's not clear cut because it's a sort "new" topic, so it's hard to gauge where conservatives stood. For instance, abortion is a clear example of something that was "settled" in a sense and almost everyone had moved on, but the GOP blew it open again. Clear rightward shift of the Overton window.

I agree the pushback on books and school topics might count towards a rightward shift on the Overton window. Banning the teaching of evolution has always kind of been a hobby horse of the extreme right though, so not totally unheard of. It is more widespread, so kind of fits the mould of abortion.

> We didn't have a lot of explicit rights in the past but we also didn't have these kinds of massive targeting and demonization campaigns by elected officials.

Agreed, but we've also seen a rapid demographic shift over the past 10-15 years [1]. I think the massive leftward push on these issues over the past 10 years, coupled with an alarming lack of caution on these demographic shifts, has led to a corresponding rightward pushback because of numerous preventable failures.

[1] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220427/cg-b0...

Re: Media Bias Fact Check: Hacker News

#75

Post by jhp123 » Mon, May 29, 2023, 2:33 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #68

jhp123 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that the window has shifted on at least the following topics: * vigilantism and militias - the Jan 6 rioters, George Zimmerman or Kyle Rittenhouse are widely celebrated in right-wing media, I don't think this really happened in the early 2000s * overt racism - racism scandals from the 90s/2000s, like the Willie Horton ad or the "Macaca" incident seems rather tame compared with what I've seen from figures…

> * vigilantism and militias - the Jan 6 rioters, George Zimmerman or Kyle Rittenhouse are widely celebrated in right-wing media, I don't think this really happened in the early 2000s I don't think Republicans changed their stance on militias. This has always had conservative support because it's literally in the constitution. As for rioting, I suppose it depends on how you frame the Overton window. The left has alwa…

I mean everything has been around but we're talking about mainstream acceptance. Trump said that the elections were stolen and the violent riots were justified. What major figure from either party supported anti-government violence before?

Voting fraud was a talking point going back at least to Von Spakovsky under Bush but this was a minor figure who wasn't taken very seriously at the time. Now it's supported by the party leadership.

The moderate Republican party elites were in control up to the tea party movement. This was what the tea party itself was saying: our views are not being represented. Mottos like "America First" and "Drain the Swamp" were relegated to third-party candidacies like Buchanan 2000.

BTW there has been movement on the left too, I'm focusing on the right because that's what you asked about. The 1990s were a moment of remarkable elite consensus with the centrist DLC in control on the left and the more moderate GOP factions on the right. This led to memes about "both parties are the same" like "Kang and Kodos" (1990) and "Giant Douche vs Shit Sandwich" (2004). Since then American politics have polarized and the parties have moved much further apart. The concept of an "Overton window" doesn't even make as much sense anymore, because many people take offense at mainstream views of the other side (e.g. "trans women are women" or "Jan 6 was justified because the 2020 election was stolen by Biden")

Re: Media Bias Fact Check: Hacker News

#76

Post by flangola7 » Tue, May 30, 2023, 3:14 AM UTC

naasking wrote: post #74

flangola7 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transgender healthcare and transgender existence as a whole is a particularly overt and luminescent example. We have always been seen as weird, but for decades I could generally expect to be able to go to a doctor and have it covered by insurance. Now in some states the government and its police forces would imprison that doctor for providing treatment and imprison my wife for teaching in a K12 school. We didn't have…

> We have always been seen as weird, but for decades I could generally expect to be able to go to a doctor and have it covered by insurance. This might be a good example, but I admit that the insurance situation in the US is so bizarre that I have no intuitions on this, re: insurance covering gender transition. Is insurance no longer covering it or something? If so, is this a legislated restriction? It is true that s…

> This might be a good example, but I admit that the insurance situation in the US is so bizarre that I have no intuitions on this, re: insurance covering gender transition. Is insurance no longer covering it or something? If so, is this a legislated restriction?

"Insurance is arbitrarily evil" can be used to explain many phenomenona in the US, but it is increasingly legislative, yes.

> It is true that states are banning this kind of care for minors, but consent around minors is pretty tricky, and some people like to ignore the nuances for simple soundbites.

There's not any nuance to it, they're straight up taking consent away from kids. The kid knows and consents to it, there's doctors and therapists and medical staff willing to help, and parents (though they shouldn't matter either way) are often glad to sign off on it too. The only entity not "consenting" is the state, and it's none of its business in the first place. Taking away someone's right to say "yes" is just as bad as taking away their "no." I have friends who would have made it to 18 if they couldn't transition.

>I think the massive leftward push on these issues over the past 10 years, coupled with an alarming lack of caution on these demographic shifts, has led to a corresponding rightward pushback because of numerous preventable failures.

Can you give some examples of this? I am humbly unaware of what you are specifically referencing.