As others have mentioned, it is a narrow definition. The idea is that the only fluctuations occur due to uncontrollable factors (weather) which, in all fairness, do impact carbon-based power too (to varying degrees).
So a war in the middle east or a trade embargo won't impact the price per kwhr. Whereas a tornado would impact both wind and oil (even if just by slowing down the deliveries).
I would argue that wind (and solar (not so much hydro)) are much more susceptible to weather impact, but with sufficiently large capacitors/batteries that can be minimized.
And the problem isn't politics. It is someone posting the crap that spews out of their mouth. I have seen just as many "Jesus H-Dawg Christ... do they actually believe that?" posts regarding the navel gazing that is "Oh, we are above everyone and people have trouble understanding us because we are technical human beings who must communicate precisely because technology" and all the smugness stereotypically associated with SV startup culture. Not to mention people doing their best to mimic political shouting near each other in the Google Trusted Contacts thread.
The problem isn't topics. The problem is posters. If it was even tangentially related to tech (a new start-up community in a ghetto?), someone could post a well thought out and reasoned statement arguing against ethnic diversity. I would be amazed if they did, but anything is possible. Just like people can post incredibly shortsighted and emotional crap about what text editor to use.
So rather than make a blanket (and half-assed, at that) statement on a topic being banned (will be interesting to see what gets removed and what/who YC are financing or partnering with in the near future...), remove the negative posts while leaving the good.
A big problem is that a lot of this is driven less by people who have a genuine need for encrypted communication and more by people who want one on principle. And the latter tend to include the people who are more likely to try The Next New Thing.
And it also makes sense. A lot of these services are from companies that need to make money. And there isn't much money in the journalists and dissidents who don't have a bespoke solution.
What we have is a future president (ugh...) who has repeatedly shown himself to change his mind at the drop of a hat, be easily engaged and enraged on social media, and who has a long career (since long before he even considered running or POTUS in the 90s) of racism and misogyny (not to mention admitting to and taking pride in sexual assault...).
The fact that we DON'T know what he truly intends to do is terrifying, and that is why people discuss it. We know what he has said he intends to do .We know that some stuff he has backpedaled on, only to come back a few days later. That is exactly why people feel a need to discuss it.
And we also know that his vice president and growing cabinet are much more consistently "on message".
Ok. When did he say he would build a list of Muslims from Facebook? What is that based on?
Obama actually did target conservatives with the IRS[1] and nobody on here wasting time speculating what he might or might not do even though he clearly does things that weren't in his campaign speeches and lied about other things ("you can keep your plan"[2]).
My point is that suddenly a ton of young liberal people that lived most of their adult life with Democrat in the white house have someone they didn't vote for in office and they don't have the maturity to deal with it. It's constant over-the-top messaging about the end of the country and when Republicans did the same thing during Obama's presidency ("death panels", "secret muslim", etc), they were laughed out of the room as they should have been. It's embarrassing coming from the side that touted things like "facts tend to be liberal".
> don't kids have a right to not let their parents know?
Quite frankly: no. As a kid, you aren't mature enough or developed enough to be trusted to make reasonable decisions. That is why you have a guardian and that is why you get some leeway in court. It is also why you tend to not be allowed to consent to many things.
You can keep your banging your boyfriend from your parents (but they probably know. Kids aren't that smart. ESPECIALLY when crotches are involved), but they should, if they wish, know where you are. Because they are responsible for you and are responsible for dealing with your screw-ups. If that means humping in a car or at a friend's place while their parents are out of town: Welcome to being a teenager.
Being a kid is about screwing up. A LOT. Being a parent is about being the safety net for those screw-ups. And that involves being able to find your dumbass kid when they do what kids do.
As for abuse: The parents who want to know where you are 24/7 already can. Just install an app to do it or use Find my iPhone/Android. If anything, this is less invasive as the child can decline to share location and just call to say "I'm alright".
If kids don't screw up because they are under constant control, what would give you assurance they will not once that constant control gets turned off?
Also I don't honestly understand: what threats are you actually protecting your kids from by having them under constant location surveillance?
Do you guys fear your kids are at constant risk of being kidnapped every time they go out?
I used to worry that my little brother would have some accident while driving drunk or stoned, I worry about friends and relatives being molested or physically assaulted, but knowing where they are would hardly give me any solace.
Again, the strawman is that parents will watch every five seconds all day long. Yes, some will, but they already have
Again, if anything, this gives MORE leeway. My sister pings her kid's location. They have five minutes to approve or decline and call her. That handles the problem of kids who don't realize that obnoxious ringtone is theirs.
And the google page on this already gave the use case. Someone goes somewhere (in this case, hiking) and later misses an appointment. You ping them and get an idea of where they were and can act from there.
Going back to the My Sister example: The kid doesn't respond and she gets a location. It is her kid's friend Jane's place. My sister is now relieved because she trusts her kid and Jane to not get into too much trouble (outside of MAYBE needing a Plan B pill...). Or she gets the location and it is the intersection of Drug Street and Rape Alley. My sister is now pissed and kind of terrified and actively calls the kid while looking for her car keys to go deal with this. Or the kid declines, calls her, and says "Hey mom. I'm fine. Oh, that loud car and gunfire in the background? We are totally playing Call of Duty. I'll talk to you later". At this point, depending on the parent, they decide how to act. I know from experience that my sister would probably IM her husband or me and start complaining and we would try to calm her down and remind her that her kid isn't a complete dumbass and knows they can count on her. Whereas I know our mother would be insisting on picking us up from wherever we may be.
But again, this strawman of the abusive parent is just a load of bull hockey. They already have ways to be abusive parents.
thanks for the reply, but I never talked about abusive parents. I don't think parents are abusive if they want to check their kids position, i think it's normal.
And I don't expect anyone to be checking the phone every 5 seconds, either, the _possibility_ of checking it at any time is what conditions my behaviour.
And with the world we live in: Understanding that someone is always watching IS a good thing to teach. Teach your kids that anything they do online can have repercussions. And if they are doing something where they absolutely would be screwed if they were caught: Should they be doing it?
As a kid that means not hanging out with Billy the Pothead. As an adult that may be something (more) illegal. Learn early.
It is an incredibly vague rule that probably just means "If this offends someone we want to do business with, we'll nuke it"
But it is no secret that US conservatives are a lot more pro-fossil fuels and US liberals are less anti-renewables. In that context, who is in power determines who is approving budgets and who is giving subsidiaries and incentives.
To remove the ability to acknowledge the political aspect of things would lead to
"I wish we spent more on wind power." being responded to with "Well, we would if <COMMENT REMOVED DUE TO RULE VIOLATION>"
It is also worth noting that there is a difference between discussing white nationalism itself and discussing the impact of it and if it needs to be curtailed.
For example, let's look at Google's Trusted Contacts. For obvious reasons, a lot of HN are very opposed to it. One topic that was brought up was the Google Buzz disaster and how google pre-built the community based on who we had emailed and talked to. Which was very dangerous for people who had an abusive ex.
If that were to launch today (and something similar will...), white nationalism becomes a huge problem. All of those bloggers and twitter folk who decide to NOT shove their head in the sand and actually engage and speak up are suddenly going to have their other contacts exposed. The people who have friends who speak against Breitbart are now directly exposed.
And that is a pretty big tech AND social issue. And to ignore the problem with a large movement of people who tend to be more armed than their political spectrum counterparts and who have a long history of getting their way through abuse is horrifically negligent.
And considering that white nationalist parties/candidates are gaining political office in many western nations, it becomes even more of an issue. Can we discuss political legislature that seems to specifically target tech geared toward helping inner city youths (who tend to be black)? What about a marked tendency for facial recognition and profiling software that applies a color wheel to determine threats to gain funding?
All of that is political, all of that is very heavily influenced by understanding that it is white nationalist parties pushing it, and all of that MUST be discussed.
On a completely unrelated note: While I do feel that political discussion is a necessity for any site that claims to be about cutting edge technology and ideas, there are also times you just should not engage. A good rule of thumb is that if a post is immediately antagonistic (and in all fairness, yours kind of was too) or ignores everything in the interest of isolating one phrase that MIGHT be disputable, it isn't.
Which is kind of why I think this entire "detox", much like just about every detox that is about getting rid of the antioxidants or whatever the hell people go to spas for, is a load of bull. The problem isn't the topic, it is how people discuss it. And people discuss plenty of topics in overly emotional and pedantic ways. Often times while extolling their own intelligence in a way that makes you REALLY glad they aren't in the same room as you (HN may be even worse than reddit on that last point).
Respond to posts that can have a discussion. Ignore the ones that can't.
> The problem isn't the topic, it is how people discuss it.
Of course. Yet there are obvious correlations to certain topics, and there might be a connection between the "how people discuss it" and the capacity to take a week off from it once in a while.
I thought we weren't supposed to make generalizations here. Gasp, shock, horror!
Also, are you really taking the correlation route in the pseudo-intellectual argument for why there is a ban?
Because if we are just going by correlation: Any time security or privacy is a topic, people stop reading anything and just start speaking from The Heart (just look at the Google Trusted Contacts thread where a significant chunk of the posters have no idea what the app even is...). So clearly that topic should be banned too, right? I mean, there is a clear and obvious correlation between topics about security and privacy and people having emotional discussions. So ban it
In all seriousness: It is your product and you do with it as you see fit. Just understand that people used to love Google and Facebook until they decided (rightly or wrongly) that they were just a commodity and that they were giving their personal information and opinions to an entity that had no problems doing experiments to figure out how to better target them. And with crap like this, it won't take long for people to realize that the company built around knowing what tech to invest in may have an ulterior motive for hosting a board for Cutting Edge Tech (TM) and may be using the data for less than kosher reasons. And crap like this is a good way to trigger a burst of thought from people.
it won't take long for people to realize that the company built around knowing what tech to invest in may have an ulterior motive for hosting a board for Cutting Edge Tech (TM) and may be using the data for less than kosher reasons.
Would you expand on this? What ulterior motives do you have in mind? What do you think HN is using the data for? Most of the data is available through the API, so pretty much anyone can use the data for whatever purpose they'd like.
> ignores everything in the interest of isolating one phrase
Why? If it's a valid criticism, why not. Sure, reading into things that take the thread into some tangent is bad; but otherwise, a call for clarification, even if nit-picking, is hard to judge objectively.
> The problem isn't the topic, it is how people discuss it
I agree, but only through objective and explicit guidelines can this be fixed.
> Ignore the ones that can't.
What I dislike more than a topic that is uninteresting to me, is people who also find it uninteresting, and yet comment on the fact. I don't dislike HN posts about apple, because I never read those posts, and it's usually obvious from the title what they are about.
So you are saying because A is a subset of B, then I cannot claim overlap? Because you refuse to acknowledge the reality of racial identity politics? I guess when the White Nationalists meet in DC to do their Sig Heil in support of Trump (this literally happened) or vandalize churches in DC (this literally happened) we can all pretend that the dialogue attacking minorities is unrelated to white nationalism? That sites like Breitbart who push these racially charged stories can wash their hands while they collect ad revenue from stirring up racial violence?
You label me "toxic" and dishonest, but you want me to just accept your assumptions? My "honest" dialogue is based on verifiable facts, not speculative slander.
While possibly too political to discuss on HN, Hotz is a Brand. His claim to fame was rooting an iPhone and later showing the world why we can't have nice things (showing that OtherOS was a security hole and making Sony disable it)
This was a continuation of that. He was hacking the future and all that crap to raise money. Once he and his backers realized there were actually regulatory boards for this (Oh no! Politics!) they had to pull out immediately. So they "fought the system" and open sourced it (not really) to show that he is A Man of The People.
And most people will never care to look at the source and will (hopefully) think he invented Teslas or whatever the hell.
And in a year or two, he and many of the same backers will innovate and revolutionize a new field have a new product that they can hopefully get bought out on before that field's regulatory board cares. And the buyer will know it is snake oil but will now have a reputation and a Brand to increase the value of the actual product they had been working on for years.
Eh the "nice things" logic is so irrelevant here, I hope nobody expected this to be true with vehicles. Apple locked ecosystem has nothing to do with ... well gravity.
People either don't know or forgot that not long ago DARPA still held an open challenge to drive alone in the "desert".
The structure of my post could probably use some work. The first paragraph is background on Hotz to give context. The second was what he did at comma and why it was pseudo-open sourced. The third was why it will be effective, and the fourth is how he and his backers will profit
So I assume this means that yc is now concerned over alienating a certain political party/faction that tends to have a lot of money but not a lot of support among college grads.
And as many others have said, this is a horrible idea. ESPECIALLY for a site oriented toward start-ups (or, at least, people who like to talk about start-ups). Guess who is going to be signing off on the regulations that determine what is and isn't allowed? Guess who is going to determine where research money goes and what gets subsidies or tax breaks?
Oh yeah, that thing which you don't want anyone to discuss.
A few years old and more geared toward HPC and scientific computing, but Michio Kaku gave a great talk at SC about how politics and lobbying are very important and are actually vital and that if technology wants to advance it needs to not plug its ears and hide but actually be involved and fight for our interests.
Rather than sit around, gazing at our navels, and talking about how amazingly smart and above it all we all are maybe, just maybe, people should actually consider "disrupting" the world into an "agile" state that can actually result in a government and laws that aren't a hindrance. And you sure as sugar don't get that by talking about how nobody else knows how to communicate with anyone because they aren't "hackers".
But hey, gotta make sure you don't alienate anyone who might be a good business partner.
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Maybe, just maybe, enforce rules about not making emotional and unfounded posts. Because that is largely independent of politics and is the kind of thing that makes it hard to take this place seriously as a "meeting of the minds" and mostly causes it to feel like "A marginally less meme filled reddit".
Solves problems that don't exist: Letting people split the fee on tickets so that one person doesn't have to buy everyone's ticket. Check
Acts as though providing the same service as competitors is novel: Almost the entirety of their schtick. Check
High Profile people who don't have any meaningful knowledge of the topic at hand: Tyler Perry and Spielberg totally understand theatre economics. So... check.
Already integrating with social media to monetize the hell out of everything: Oh baby check.
About the only thing novel or interesting are group discounts which a lot of theatres already do. Aside from that, this seems to be an example of everything that is wrong with startup/gig economies outside of exploiting workers (and I am sure they'll find a way. Maybe offer an option to have people stand in line for you).
So a war in the middle east or a trade embargo won't impact the price per kwhr. Whereas a tornado would impact both wind and oil (even if just by slowing down the deliveries).
I would argue that wind (and solar (not so much hydro)) are much more susceptible to weather impact, but with sufficiently large capacitors/batteries that can be minimized.