antiverse

This thread is seriously bonkers.

When we were children, our elders were well aware of a link between alcohol and cancer (among other failures like cirrhosis) because their elderly friends would pass away from one or more of these. It was, albeit unscientifically, established that there does exist a strong enough correlation to warrant warning children about it. To this day, none of us needed a study for any of this. What happened?

To see HN stand up for Big Alcohol and twist this study with whataboutism and other nonsensical detractions is just plain morbid.

> owned by an ever richer and smaller [...] elite

This has been the case for a very, very, very long time. You're old enough now to see it for what it is. There are things around the owners that you are not allowed to say, perpetuated by culture and society writ large. The only two kinds of people unwilling to admit to this are either paid shills, or useful idiots. Everyone else is mum on the subject but they can see the world is orchestrated by powerful individuals who are in lockstep. They know they own things, and they are all chummy about it. The pie is divided among them.

You can file anyone who says "You're just old" under the "useful idiot" category. Anyone who believes they are a temporarily embarrassed millionaire is equally useful.

For everyone else:

Stop:

1) Reading news. 2) Watching streaming services. 3) Watching porn.

All three are owned by the same group of people and are designed to control what you see and what you think.

Instead:

1) Read books. 2) Socialize with like-minded people. 3) Lift heavy weights. 4) Help others and being kind. 5) Seek out nature - swim in lakes, eat in the mountains, and learn the sounds of birds. 6) Learn useful knots.

Lastly:

7) Escape clown world.

Just flag it, it's not worth the effort to get into this. For anyone not aware of the context, look into the recent NIMBY bullshit by Andreessen.

Exactly my point.

I'm surprised this is coming to light now.

I evaluated their tech early on, and it struck me right away at how poorly thought out some decisions were. Very basic things, too. One distinct issue I remember is not having any sort of an "Application" object or app-state pipeline interface/object that I can place my non-component logic into, stuff like checking various timers, handling app-level event hooks, and so on. Turns out, people attach this sort of logic to the Camera component. How the fuck did you get to that point without thinking about any of this?

>Are we now gonna start arresting all cryptographers?

There are more cryptogrifters than there are cryptographers.

> fewer streaming services

Pessimist's take: When thinking about what we trade our time for, TV shows (and films, to some degree) have always been to me an endless source of a time sink for relatively little return. Games, slightly better, more social in some ways, certainly more mentally engaging, but also parasitic of time. To concurrently pay for multiple streaming services is unfathomable to me, moreso right now where, as you point out, your expenses have ballooned and your salary can't keep up. You aren't the only one, and yet it's highly likely (anecdotal experience here) that your friends know more about the last season of a show than they know about how to prep for the looming days, as you are prepping. One would think there's better ways to have downtime than to tune out in front of a box, but these habits are difficult to break.

(Cue the "They'll tell you" jokes.)

I've cancelled my Spotify premium sub years ago because in truth they've always had ads: the Dashboard always had artists that I had zero interest in listening to, that were not part of or related in any way to the music in my library, and that big labels wanted to push my way. There was no way to turn this off, so after a month or so I just cancelled my sub.

So, Google-account-cancellation phobias aside, I went to Youtube Music where I still am. No bullshit.

No doubt then you're familiar with the Antikythera.

You would think that more people would put two and two together but what baffles me is the dissonance in people's minds of ancient civilizations - namely that they were oh so primitive, but at the same time there is this underlying current of, "how could they have possibly known this if they were so primitive?" with the discoveries we find that they have left behind - whether it be mechanical, architectural, agricultural, whatever.

I think over all they were not much worse off intellectually than we are, but they haven't yet discovered certain things - much as we have yet to discover certain things. For them, it was a mechanical age for a very long time and they've mastered that in much the same way that we are slowly beginning to master electronics and chemistry. We've had a very, very slow ascent towards electricity until it has become commonplace as it is today. I doubt the design of electrical components that we can easily plug in and out with a bit of molten lead/tin would, to them, be anything short of wizardry.

So don't be distraught by the otherness of it. It is quite a different way to look at problems that really tests our understanding of first principles of the natural world.

It's disappointing to hear, with the number of people here claiming how IA has run afoul of the copyright law, that it's an open-and-shut case and there is nothing more to discuss. I feel like the air of the hacker spirit on the website is greatly diminished when we take an ice-cold approach to a difficult problem like this.

I for one commend them for doing a noble thing in a very turbulent time. We didn't know how the pandemic was going to play out early on in 2020 and they went ahead to help out in any way they could. Perhaps the US Federal Government will give them some kind of an exemption (if such a thing exists). I'm sure they can find a case where their action is justified in the eyes of law.