ratel

I was waiting for the new spaghetti cowboys to arrive. Good luck guys, but keep in mind that a 1000 cores can do a lot more damage than 3 people can fix.

Honest question because I just don't know: Is Reddit shielded by Section 230 for comments made by moderators?

I would say moderation is by definition editorial, but I have learned to not confuse logic with the law.

[edited]

Can someone explain what d(3)=(|x|^3+|y|^3)^(1/3) would actually mean as the blog seems to suggest something more profound than the below?

If d=|x|+abs|y} is moving in 2 dimensions, one dimension at a time and d(2)=(x^2+y^2)^(1/2) is moving in 2 dimensions at the same time, d(3)=(|x|^3+|y|^3)^(1/3) would have to mean moving 3 dimensions at once in two dimensional space (as it is missing the 3th position z) and for all n moving n dimensions at once in two dimensional space.

Now pi comes down to the constant calculating circumference. The blog shows we can approximate it best ignoring all other dimensions but those two in two dimensional space. Seems obvious, but that has everything to do with the nature of pi, not with the math.

d=(|x|^3+|y|^3+|z|^3)^(1/3) would approximate pi better in 3 dimensional space than in any other, etc.

>While the post is great, terrifying, and seems to contain only true and verifiable information, I’m not sure what we expect.

Well we expect people and corporations to fix a problem when confronted with it. That is what we expect.

> „Normal“ people will not read this, nor be able to understand, nor gauge or grasp the impact. It’s become way to complex. We can’t simply stop using mentioned services anymore as a society.

Have to give you a pass on "normal" people. I don't know any. I see no reason why we cannot go without the (by the way) unmentioned services or why we cannot change them to be more privacy conscious.

>Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to teach:

No it would be more reasonable to teach that privacy is vitally important to have a functioning society and economy. Anyone claiming different think they can exploit the information disparity between you and them to make money in the short term.

>1. You have no privacy, it is impossible to ensure or guarantee privacy, and there’s no incentive at all for anyone to ensure privacy. (Scott McNeally of Sun said that already in the late 1990s).

Well I respect Scott, but this is not his great moment. Let's change this to be still completely true: You have no property, it is impossible to ensure or guarantee property and there's no incentive at all for anyone to ensure property. Well we did find a way to actually do ensure property. It is called the law (and a government to enforce it). Just an idea to use this tried and tested concept on privacy as well.

>2. There is no security and every kind of security has been, was designed to, or will be compromised.

First this has always been true. Every lock can be picked. Fortunately not everyone can pick a lock. That is the reason why most of us still lock the door.

>3. All your digital information is already public or will become public at some point. (btw: Every top-tier consultancy operates under that assumption)

You mean those top-tier consutancy firms mentiond in this book: "The Big Con" by Muzzucato and Collington, Penguin, 2023? I can see that they sell the assumption, but they are not operating by it. If that were true McKinsey for example would have known their advice to Purdue Pharma would become public and they would lose big on it.

In short people who claim privacy is not important mean: _your privacy_ is not important and they are overly confident they can keep ahead of the information disparity to keep themselves private. See how hard, ironically, Google is working to keep all their information private in a public anti-trust trail.

I am always looking for the interesting in computer design as most of what we work with is bland. The reviewer is a fanboy. Okay, that happens. He is the one claiming it to be functional. He calls it brutalist. Frankly I completely fail to see that with its mock engraving on the aluminum case and the stylized keyboard. Great design is art, but not all art is great design. It does not have to be. Whatever it thinks it is, it should not be boring. Unfortunately it is just that.

My favorite (almost) obscene quote I found reviewing code, although I never could find the back story to it:

"Which idiot wrote this crap?

You did!

Which idiot hired me?"

I think this also points to the statistical significance. Code that has been worked over a couple of times and/or has been worked on by different people for all those hard and fringe problems will be better, but also accumulate more comments venting the trouble people had fixing them. It does not seem very interesting.

Let's see: Modern art starts somewhere around 1860 until 1970's. The term modern art was presumably first used in writing in the 1890's for French painters Coubert and Manet.The CIA was founded in 1947. Even MoMa predates the CIA by 18 years. So the answer must be no.

It sure sounds like we have the same problem. For me however there are a few things I have learnt:

1. There is nothing (medically) wrong with you. Although I should own a t-shirt saying *) may contain nuts.

2. No you don't procastinate or are lazy for that matter. You probably already moved on to the next 10 things before people can come up with that diagnosis.

3. Yes you are the librarian of the infinite library of unfinished projects. In that you do have the tendency to keep track of all the projects you have not finished and feel inadequate (that moment between projects)

But the honest problem is that projects fizzle when you solve your erebra problem. And that is usually way before anything got made. Let alone finished. Quick win is to ask yourself: What have I learned from this project? And make that the result of the project. But after doing that a couple of thousand times you start to realise: Why am I learning all this stuff if I never use it to create something.

And that is the biggest problem. All your insights never lead to anything being created and that sucks.

Possible solutions ( and I personally do all of them ):

1. Find a job/role/gig where you think of the solutions and let other people implement them. Just always remember that it is no longer your project. You might have thought of something, but without the efforts of others it will never amount to anything, ever. So as long as you can respect the work of others and your own limitations in doing what they do you will do fine. But is harder than you might expect: My rule of thumb is that the moment I think they should be able to solve something on their own I failed.

2. Find more challenging problems. I usually do this by trying to expand something that spiked my interest to make it more generically applicable or asking myself if the problem is actually worth a solution ('faster horses') and if the underlying problem is not more interesting (mobility). This has two advantages: It will keep itching longer and takes you longer to scratch. Less projects to add to your library. You might create, solving your original itch, products that are basically byproducts of the solution you are looking for. Such a product is basically what pays my bills at the moment.

3. For those smaller itchy patches it helps to promise other people something: Present your findings, write a paper, make a POC by an agreed upon deadline. Now you have to be empatic enough to want to meet their deadline and thus create what you promised with all the works that comes with it. That is your result. You also have to be selfish enough to tell people that is where you end your involvement, because it no longer interests you, regardless of the plans they have pursuing this further. That is a tricky balance to strike and I struggle at times and do it wrong.

What ever you do and maybe you have better ideas than the above make sure you get to the point were your projects lead to something being created, because that really makes the difference.

Well my suggestion would be to be confident and positive. Confident that your issue/ cause/subject is important and that there are enough other people sharing that believe in the forum, regardless of the nay-sayers. With positive I mean post things that are on topic for you, comment on things you find contributing to the issue/cause/subject and refrain from the rest. You really don't have to tell people that something is inappropriate, that they are wrong, dangerous. They will learn by not getting a response. Don't try to control a narrative, try to share a narrative with as much people who are willing to join the forum.

Nothing in this article is specifically related to forum posts. This stuff can be found within any gathering of people and most have been described way earlier than the internet, as far back as the original Forum or Agora. That is not what is wrong with it.

If you read the article and think there is something to it, please read it again and compare all the 'evidence' to the behavior of what you suspect a normal forum user would do: Ask questions? Gather information? Establish rapport? Propose something stupid or dangerous? Comment on the wrong thing? Post something that leads people away from the post you are interested in and have so much people comment on it that your important information disappears. You can get that just by the number of people telling the original poster it is 'off-topic'. Yes you would expect normal users to do all of them some of the time.

If you value your (online) community judge all actions by Hanlon's razor: "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". If malice was that easily distinguishable from normal behavior there would be a lot less of it. Don't let anyone tell you you should approach your community with suspicion, because then they are already halfway there in destroying it.

It sounds like a tough problem that you are not going to resolve before you leave.

First realise that there won't be a lot to do when you get back. They are not that quick as you say.

Second discuss with the team the problem: If you need to correct all their work when you get back the project will get delayed and hell will be paid/management will be displeased (depending on management culture). So you expect them to do minimale code changes and spend extra time testing. In your absence review each others code changes so you won't have to spend too much time approving when you get back. Empower them.

Third, but long term: If you are the most competent person in the room look for another.

I'm a solo entrepreneur and have been for 20 years. Can I be trusted: Yes. Is that obvious to prospective clients? Not at all. So the question is how are you going to limit the risk for your clients when using your products? Have business answers to the risk you are asking them take.

Don't tell your prospects that all companies big and small can fail and don't use data to prove your point. It might all be true, but telling your prospects they are doomed whatever they decide is not getting you to a 'Yes'.

In my case I have niche products that are still largely unique and don't have to compete with bigger organizations. A competition I would lose in a heartbeat if customers had the choice regardless of price or chances of success. I still make sure that I have a decent solution for the 'bus' argument and I am generous with supplying access to the code they need to keep their application running when I do get hit by bus, financials ruin or old age. At best I can say: It worked up till now.

What I don't understand is that although there are a lot of non-profits in the US that are willing to help in these kinds of cases. Non of them ever tried or suggested going after the original notice giver for perjury as at least some of these notices would fall under 'willful ignorance' as defined in United States v. Fawley (1998). The notice giver is in a (unique) position to determine if they actually hold the copyright and which specific part of some digital information is indeed infringing on that as this is the entire basis of the take-down notice. The fact that they do not supply it when serving the notice, but later will have to rely on it in court makes them willful ignorant when serving the notice.

Getting the perjury clause of the DMCA upheld would of course have a chilling effect on sending take-down notices in such a frivolous manor.

Disclaimer: a) I am not a US citizen b) TGIANAL

Sorry, I respectfully disagree. Censorship is someone else preventing you from saying something you want to say. Self censorship (as something you want to say but do not because of fear of the consequences) is not a thing, simply because you cannot distinguish between the want to utter and the want not to utter and which is eventually winning in your head and the fact that you did or did not utter something. It is a process we call thinking. We choose our words or the absence of them and that makes them worth while.

There is also no opposite to self-censorship: I want to be able to say everything I want without consequence. You say something because you want it to have and audience and thus consequences. Saying you want the consequences, just not the negative ones is saying you want everyone to confirm you are right. Well join the other 7 billion.

The idea of self-censorship is also not innocent because you are robbing people of agency. You actually deny them to choose their own words. The idea of self-censorship requires an external party to declare someone wanted to say something, but he or she is self-censoring, That implies that you know what they think and the absence or presence of words gets filled in with whatever that third party thinks that person wanted to say.