Recent submissions

Comment · 11 years ago
>Democracy does exactly that - it gives everyone the same vote, regardless what minority they come from. Therefore, it protects any minority for maximum possible extent.

From my reading, doesn't this say nothing? "democracy protects minorities as much as democracies could ever protect minorities."

>the majority is emergent

How does "emergence" affect the possibility of tyranny?

>it violates the basic democratic rule, "every person should get the same power in politics"

So maybe the takeaway here is that pure democracy is insufficient? The original point was that "Political systems should protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority."

>Democracy is defined by the end result (same access to power), not the procedure (voting).

Isn't this just semantics?

>It's true that even without stripping other voter's rights, minorities can still be persecuted. But it is a cultural issue, which won't be resolved by formal constitutional framework.

Isn't "stripping other voter's rights" a loaded way to put it? Freedom to vote doesn't necessarily have to mean freedom to persecute--freedoms generally end at the boundary where they begin trampling other freedoms. Also, in which situations "It is a cultural issue"? What does that imply? Does DemocracyOS fix cultural issues?

>In fact, historically, it very often were elites (that you may think are the solution) who participated or even organized these persecutions.

Did the parent suggest a return to oligarchy? Do current elites participate in persecutions?

>For example, in the U.S., there is a large minority of people in prison who are not protected by democracy, because they don't have voting rights.

How will people in prison obtain fair representation under DemocracyOS?

>This can possibly protect a minority, but it can also delay progress in helping minority. The minority that needs to be overruled in super-majority voting can keep the status quo longer than desired by most, and that's unfair too.

So the solution is to never protect minorities in the first place?

>We don't know what the future morality will be; it may be different in positive, not negative, fashion compared to today's morality. We could perhaps say, though, that the future society will be more happy with their own morality than ours (because they can compare the two, we cannot); therefore, it should be possible for them not be too conservative and implement it.

Yes, political systems should enable the implementation of policies. This says nothing about the merits of different political systems.

Comment · 12 years ago
I just want to say: HN is bursting with great articles today.
Comment · 12 years ago
Right, book publishers are largely middlemen. Let the old ways die and a hundred new business models flourish.
Comment · 12 years ago
Yep, lots of workplaces are like this. As you do care, get away from PHP ASAP.

Beware of structuring and refactoring too much, or writing low-ROI tests. You must find balance.

Comment · 12 years ago
At least now we have Mozilla Persona.

Oh, and a shining example of good mobile fingerprint reader UX. Soon...

Comment · 13 years ago
I bet it has lots to explore and "lovingly crafted" I can buy, but "gorgeous"? Not everything can be gorgeous. Maybe try "quirky" or "with character"?

Anyway, buying to support, and wishing you success.

Comment · 13 years ago
When you become sure what the future price of BTC will be, please, do tell.
Comment · 13 years ago
I believe proprioception is resilient to minor offsets or miscalibration, as I've seen such illusions at science exhibits--false hands that you're tricked into thinking is your own. And the STEM system (absolute body position tracking) apparently is high-precision.

It's more likely that immersion will be broken by perceptible latency.

Comment · 13 years ago
Yeah, virtual phone and virtual laptop seem ridiculous when you have an AR headset. There's even a virtual laptop keyboard... how could the glasses possibly detect your typing?

That Oculus demo looks great! See, there's an honest video you can actually believe. Promising for sure.

Comment · 13 years ago
Comment · 13 years ago
I have to admit I'm ignorant as to what Java libraries I'm missing out on by not using a JVM language. I hear about this advantage a lot though! What are some examples of good Java libraries that aren't as good in other common languages?
Comment · 13 years ago
To get back into your account you're provided backup codes that you're supposed to store somewhere safe. Otherwise, if your phone were stolen you'd be out of luck, yes.
Comment · 13 years ago
Re: photos of you being posted: You can enable manual approval of you-being-tagged appearing in your Timeline in privacy settings.
Comment · 13 years ago
I get that App.net is supposed about owning your own data, and sure there's a brief mention of PRISM at the top. But why I would want to write an app for it in the era of PRISM? How can I trust this notion of a "private cloud?"

What I'm looking for now is more decentralization and encryption than a walled garden.

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