pickingdinner

I did get to the point where I could tailor a comment for upvotes and guard them from downvotes, at least to some degree... But that's not free speech or free thinking. And all that effort to an audience that is also under the same constraints only makes for a safe but somewhat walking-on-eggshells conversation, at least when it comes to controversial ideas like... space vs tabs and apple vs microsoft. lol

HN is great for what it is. Gathering 2 cents from everyone. I've only had a great time adding my positive 2 cents, and I continue to enjoy learning from everyone else's.

Downvoted without a counter argument. Which just proves my point. There is nothing more unintellectual than a plain downvote. I even had some guardrails in that comment too. But I am sure the downvote was warranted to the person who did it.

But also upvotes are similar. No one necessarily "likes" the truth. Nothing about correctness really warrants whatever an upvote means to that person. A "correct" vote maybe, but those are unavailable on these platforms. Not designed for intellectual discourse.

Just to be fair, Twitter is worse. How can you have intellectual discourse with character limits and contextless-ness as a feature? You get something, and something valuable to many, surely, but it isn't intellectual discourse.

Youtube comments are another great case study. Reddit also.

These platforms are not designed for intellectual discourse, even when they're advertised to be, and even when they try to be.

You can't just be right. You also need to be careful. Some would say mindful, but that's not it. You need to be careful not to trigger anyone or trip any ideological wires. Not fun and for what, so you don't bother anymore.

And this is not to discredit the moderators or anything else here or on any other moderation dependent platform. Without them the average quality of comments would be worse, but there also is no denying that their primary role is censorship.

Writing is thinking. To differentiate between liberal arts and engineering is complete bogus.

Superficial simplicity here could be thought of as worse outcomes with fewer abstractions. Succeeding at fewer does not guarantee better outcomes.

Which brings us to the main source of disagreement. Define worse.

A confident developer or designer will often sell or even prove their simpler design is better. That's their job. But to be sold or convinced isn't the experience. Using the thing is.

And iOS is all that plus the ambiguity of the existence, location, and look of the button/action itself.

You need to optimize the product for the best scenarios, and guide everyone towards those scenarios.

What happened to OKCupid is typical. Founders envision the best scenarios for their users, and build a business around that product. User satisfaction drives their success.

Corporations aren't really good at that. So they need someone to override mindless acts of profiteering in favor of a better future. Someone with a vision, but also the power to enforce it. But they also have to be right.

Ya, F google. But that's what corporations do. I wouldn't expect otherwise. But that's also why the PR department could get on this and make it right, and profitable (which is always the only motivation).

The Honda "random acts of helpfulness" goes a bit too far to be tasteful to me, because their acts are so random.

But if an individual could use help, and the situation is related to a companies service or product, the business should help, even just for PR, especially if they are selling to consumers, whom are all individuals.

Or maybe those overconfident with negative attitudes resort to intermediate scientific knowledge?

And aren't there humble optimists with intermediate sci knowledge?

Maybe there just aren't enough humble optimists?

> engage in speech against their will

X or musk's will? If X has a "say" on a "speech platform" that's a major power imbalance.

Not that X's speech is this or that, but that it shouldn't exist on it's own. Musk or anyone may speak on behalf of X, but if there is no "on behalf of" there should be no speech there.

Speech as in, to put forth opinion, ideology, values or anything beyond simply being silent and letting everyone else (users, which includes those who may speak on behalf of) speak.

As an aside, anyone know what makes pages like these not wheel-scroll? Page shows 2 scrollbars.

Anyone have a good recipe for proper color coding and autocompletion for mixed language files? js, html, css, php. I love spacemacs but couldn't get it to work right until I bailed for vscode which had everything working out of the box...

Eliminate trust.

The thing must be functional and operational by its own volition. No clouds, no hosts, no servers controlled by 3rd parties that control anything.

You do this by: 1) encryption. Make all data useless. 2) standardization. IoT devices must be compatible with multiple hosts, one being one you can install and run yourself. 3) open source (source available)

Companies can still sell their goods by: 1) offering the "thing" that must be bought. 2) offering the software or point to the software, maybe with added bells and whistles (a source-available extension, audited by FCC plus 2 other parties etc).

Control must be localized. In the app of the user etc. No round trips to any clouds.

You can make clear ice. Has nothing to do with the water, and everything to do with how you freeze the water. Just google "clear ice".