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

Dick Smith (Entrepreneur)

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 115 posts

Re: Dick Smith (Entrepreneur)

#81

Post by seoulmetro »

skissane wrote: post #75
seoulmetro wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being anti-immigration isn't the same as being anti-[race]. That's a weird thing to tie together.

I never said being anti-immigration is always about being anti-[race]. But, to quote Pauline Hanson's 1996 maiden speech to Parliament [0] (my emphasis): > Immigration and multiculturalism are issues that this government is trying to address, but for far too long ordinary Australians have been kept out of any debate by the major parties. I and most Australians want our immigration policy radically reviewed and that o…

I never said you did. But you are talking a lot about racism/xenophobia for something that has nothing to do with it.

You are actually reading out parts of Pauline Hanson's transcript, not the person we're discussing? So you're going even further into irrelevance? Huh?

Please don't flag this because you disagree with it...

Re: Dick Smith (Entrepreneur)

#82

Post by skissane »

nl wrote: post #78
skissane wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He chose to publicly ally himself with Pauline Hanson on the topic of immigration. Hanson has a long history of anti-immigration positions publicly justified in terms of racial/religious animus (in the 1990s targeting Asian people, more recently she has made Muslim people her primary target); when she starts trying to justify anti-immigration policies based on population growth concerns, most people (quite rightly) v…

I think he was interviewed in the same documentary about immigration as Pauline Hanson. I could be wrong but I think that was as far as it went. I remember it making me pretty uncomfortable at the time but I don't think he actually supported her or One Nation.

He went a lot further than that. In December 2016, he publicly announced that while he was not joining (or funding) her party, he supported many of her policies, and had accepted an (unpaid) role as one of her political advisers. See this TV interview with him at the time: https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/dick-smith-back...

Re: Dick Smith (Entrepreneur)

#83

Post by karmanyaahm »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #53
karmanyaahm wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Harvesting 21st century's most valuable resource -- the best and brightest people -- from disadvantaged countries is horrific. It's colonialism, in my opinion. Sure, maybe that is the case when looking at the 'Greater Good' of the whole population, but the > best and brightest people -- from disadvantaged countries are also real people with individual hopes and dreams. Just because they happened to be born in a bad…

Yes, it's rich countries screwing poor by exploiting their resources. The robber barons were also real people with individual hopes and dreams. The real problem is so are all those other people in those poor countries. The 99.99% who are left behind are also individuals with hopes and dreams.

Theoretical question, but do the 0.01% have any obligation towards the 99.99% just because they happen to be born somewhere.

Practically, yes, I know society expects people to be nationalist to some degree.

Re: Dick Smith (Entrepreneur)

#84

Post by inopinatus »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #49
inopinatus wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No-one is advocating for "massive populations", so you're pretty much throwing shade on a straw man. Anyone suggesting that Australia, for example, could handle more people, is still thinking in terms of economic, social, and environmental stability. On the contrary, though, advocating for population reduction is inherently classist, since this requires government management, and ruling classes will inevitably protec…

> No-one is advocating for "massive populations", so you're pretty much throwing shade on a straw man. Many people are. Our current global population is massive. Humans and their livestock account for 96% of all mammal biomass on earth and we're rapidly exterminating the remaining 4%. And people want it to grow significantly, e.g., the person I just replied to. > On the contrary, advocating for population reduction i…

No doubt that when repeated in whatever echo chamber they come from, those arguments attract nothing but approval.

However, since they're quite clearly a load of intentional misrepresentation and false equivalences, they don't wash with a critical outside observer.

> You can't have that as your argument

Excuse me, no, as with the previous misrepresentation of countervailing positions, once again you don't get to decide what someone else's argument is. This coercive attitude is consistent, but it doesn't hold any water.

There's no proposal to eliminate governments and ruling classes, so ignoring the realities is facile. The outcome of a downward trajectory is literally killing people, and this is not OK.

Re: Dick Smith (Entrepreneur)

#85

Post by pabs3 »

jlawer wrote: post #56
dools wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are doing our fair share by land mass it should be 500m by 2050. I find it astonishing that people have an easier time believing we can colonise Mars than that we can colonise the centre of Australia.

We can colonize the centre of Australia. There just isn't a reason to do so. You can see wherever they find a patch of minerals, a mining town springs up. Decades ago, there were towns all along the train lines to support the rail services, but as trains got more reliable they were no longer required. There are few advantages to being in the centre of Australia. Many of the people who live there do so because they ha…

If Australia can figure out how to export the energy, the centre might be a great place to build giant solar farms.

Re: Dick Smith (Entrepreneur)

#86

Post by throwawaylinux »

inopinatus wrote: post #84
throwawaylinux wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No-one is advocating for "massive populations", so you're pretty much throwing shade on a straw man. Many people are. Our current global population is massive. Humans and their livestock account for 96% of all mammal biomass on earth and we're rapidly exterminating the remaining 4%. And people want it to grow significantly, e.g., the person I just replied to. > On the contrary, advocating for population reduction i…

No doubt that when repeated in whatever echo chamber they come from, those arguments attract nothing but approval. However, since they're quite clearly a load of intentional misrepresentation and false equivalences, they don't wash with a critical outside observer. > You can't have that as your argument Excuse me, no, as with the previous misrepresentation of countervailing positions, once again you don't get to deci…

> However, since they're quite clearly a load of intentional misrepresentation and false equivalences, they don't wash with a critical outside observer.

You haven't been able to refute them though. I noticed you quietly ignored my first refutation.

> Excuse me, no, as with the previous misrepresentation of countervailing positions, once again you don't get to decide what someone else's argument is. This coercive attitude is consistent, but it doesn't hold any water.

Spare the theatrics. If there was any logic or evidence put forward to argue that sustainable populations would result in more classist oppression or disparity, then fine. But just stating that as though it supports your position doesn't work. It's a non sequitur even if we ignore that you claimed it was inherently classist "since it requires government management" (which is false).

> There's no proposal to eliminate governments and ruling classes, so ignoring the realities is facile. The outcome of a downward trajectory is literally killing people,

Wrong

Re: Dick Smith (Entrepreneur)

#87

Post by hazza_n_dazza »

ravenstine wrote: post #15
flog wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DSE was an absolute rip off, but it was pretty much the only game in town. As a kid it was an amazing place for me to spend an hour on the weekends pottering around all the electronic kitsets and latest computer parts/gadgets. I would credit DSE with fostering a lot of my love of computers and technology. I am quite sad it no longer exists.

That reminds me... on top of the shifts in society because of COVID, it's a shame that there's no place like Dick Smith, Frys, Radio Shack, computer stores, etc., where young geeks can go and meet each other. I was a geek among geeks as a kid, but even then I still liked that I could go to electronics stores, comic shops, hobby stores, and just be around people who were kind of weird like me and also had a love for t…

Hackerspace

Re: Dick Smith (Entrepreneur)

#88

Post by inopinatus »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #86
inopinatus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No doubt that when repeated in whatever echo chamber they come from, those arguments attract nothing but approval. However, since they're quite clearly a load of intentional misrepresentation and false equivalences, they don't wash with a critical outside observer. > You can't have that as your argument Excuse me, no, as with the previous misrepresentation of countervailing positions, once again you don't get to deci…

> However, since they're quite clearly a load of intentional misrepresentation and false equivalences, they don't wash with a critical outside observer. You haven't been able to refute them though. I noticed you quietly ignored my first refutation. > Excuse me, no, as with the previous misrepresentation of countervailing positions, once again you don't get to decide what someone else's argument is. This coercive atti…

[flagged]

Re: Dick Smith (Entrepreneur)

#89

Post by throwawaylinux »

inopinatus wrote: post #88
throwawaylinux wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, since they're quite clearly a load of intentional misrepresentation and false equivalences, they don't wash with a critical outside observer. You haven't been able to refute them though. I noticed you quietly ignored my first refutation. > Excuse me, no, as with the previous misrepresentation of countervailing positions, once again you don't get to decide what someone else's argument is. This coercive atti…

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Dick Smith (Entrepreneur)

#90

Post by stephen_g »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #27
ravenstine wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me... on top of the shifts in society because of COVID, it's a shame that there's no place like Dick Smith, Frys, Radio Shack, computer stores, etc., where young geeks can go and meet each other. I was a geek among geeks as a kid, but even then I still liked that I could go to electronics stores, comic shops, hobby stores, and just be around people who were kind of weird like me and also had a love for t…

Indeed, the places that sell 5 cent resistors etc were where I would hang out. But nobody does that anymore. People just buy the cheap crap from Aliexpress :'( And nonbody makes enough money selling individual components. It's such a stark difference. I remember there being a Radio Shack in mainstream retail centres like Broadway Shopping Centre. Now if you find a similar shop it'll be in some run-down industrial est…

I'd recommend people interested in electronics to go directly to somewhere like Digi-Key online for ordering parts. It's a bit of a learning curve to work out what to filter out, but you get exactly what you want for even cheaper what the retail stores could do, and for most projects it doesn't take much (a few interesting ICs) to put you over the threshold for free shipping for people in the US. The threshold for international free shipping is higher (I think it was $200?) but I have hit it sometimes!

Element-14, RS Online, and Mouser are the other ones to look at, especially here in Australia or other places not in the US, because their shipping is often better internationally. But I find myself having to bear the shipping cost for Digi-Key a fair bit!

Post reply on HN