9 ms·

> I get angry about not being able to do anything about anything. And this is my way of trying to do something about it. It's the best I can do. This a

> I get angry about not being able to do anything about anything. And this is my way of trying to do something about it. It's the best I can do. This attitude is gold, and it's what changes the whole world. What you said about the misery of "news" resonates with me. In psyops we call it "sapping". Propaganda designed to demoralise, dispirit and corrode resistance used to come from our enemies. The classic example was Lord Haw-Haw [0]. Today our own mainstream news channels and technology giants seem determined to keep the population in perpetual hopeless anxiety. As you do, I find the discourse around tech to be a pit of dismissiveness, avoidance, denial, resignation, and learned-helplessness. I've been doing a lot of interviewing people lately, and careful sentiment analysis. The results are horrifying. The very word "tech" is becoming synonymous with "Resistance is futile". To stand up and do something, anything, not because you hope for success, but as an example, and for your own sanity, is the most positive and human of responses. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Haw-Haw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Haw-Haw

Eggsellence 3y ago
[flagged]
phkahler 3y ago
>> As you do, I find the discourse around tech to be a pit of dismissiveness, avoidance, denial, resignation, and learned-helplessness. Do you think this is why people are abandoning the GPL license in favor of MIT/BSD? Something about the fight the GPL aims to win being a hopeless fantasy? In the face of the sentiment you and OP express, I'd think GPL usage would be widespread.
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  I think opinions around software licenses are limited to us hackers, and the actively code-publishing subset of us, moreover. From my POV the GPL certainly seems alive and well, and the ideology of the Free Software movement remains sound and strong. What I'm alluding to is the wider public. In <podcast-i-dare-not-mention> we literally walked around town interviewing young and old. Soon as I can, I'll share the results in a HN submission.
  - carapace 3y ago
    > Soon as I can, I'll share the results in a HN submission. Please do!
- ynniv 3y ago
  As a developer my problem with the GPL is that it's less free than other licenses. It's an interesting legal hack, but it can only succeed in its goals by boiling the ocean. I just want to write things, and sometimes making money involves not publishing all of your source code. Having to choose between options and idealism limits the popularity of GPL projects.
  - binary132 3y ago
    Isn't that kind of the point? The purpose of GPL and Free Software (which it has actually had resounding success in) is to develop a free commons which will stay free and not be exploited. It's not for you to exploit to make a buck, and if that excludes your project, that's fine. There are lots of things I would never consider free-licensing, but I think people badly miss the point of free software because they are stuck thinking only in terms of their own needs and personal benefit. Again, if you don't want to use or contribute to free software, that is perfectly reasonable. But just bear in mind that the Linux kernel and GCC are incredibly valuable tools which are firmly in the commons and will remain free, and which you have benefited enormously from the use and free availability of.
    - bigstrat2003 3y ago
      The GPL is not required for such a commons to flourish. Most Rust projects are published under a permissive license, and that scene is flourishing just fine. I think that open source software as a whole, not the GPL specifically, is what has enabled the flourishing you mention. It seems to me that in the counterfactual world where Linus chose to use the BSD license for his kernel, Linux would thrive just as much as it does today.
      - pama 3y ago
        I don’t like hypothetical counterfactuals but of course it is your choice to use them. It is hard to meaningfully compare recent programs, rust or otherwise, with established behemoths like Linux, gcc, Emacs, etc, that did the heavy lifting and allowed the playing field to remain even over multiple decades. If gcc did not exist it is not clear at all how a hypothetical computerized world would develop.
- jwells89 3y ago
  I think a lot of distaste towards GPL comes from devs with corporate day jobs who feel frustrated that anything GPL licensed is functionally off-limits at work because there’s no way legal would approve of using it, and certainly would not approve of open sourcing whatever project is built with the GPL thing. I can see where such an individual might think to themselves, “I don’t want to put other devs in my position in the same pickle, so I’m licensing my thing as MIT/BSD”.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - downWidOutaFite 3y ago
    Right, corporate lawyers are ideological activists trying to kill GPL. But the campaign to denigrate the ideological activists on the other side is much more successful.
    - freedomben 3y ago
      > Right, corporate lawyers are ideological activists trying to kill GPL. This is a pretty cynical "assume the worst" outlook, and it badly violates Occam's Razor. I think a much more likely reason that corporate lawyers disapprove of the GPL is that one of their main jobs (in some cases their entire job) is to protect the company's IP, and the GPL is a huge threat to IP. Any lawyer who didn't advise avoiding the GPL would be negligent. I personally love the GPL and encourage its use whenever possible, but I avoid it in decisions for my employers and customers because of the risks. I think generally speaking the risks are not nearly as serious as most people I think, but they do exist (otherwise the copyleft philosophy of the GPL would be pointless!)
      - downWidOutaFite 3y ago
        I've seen too many cases, recent example comes to mind is apple switching from bash to zsh, that are done not for technical or even business reason but ideological.
  - 3y ago
- distract8901 3y ago
  Copyleft was a good idea, but its real world utility is a lot less than anyone would like. I once inherited a GPL project, but I couldn't muster any community interest in working with it. Plugin authors would have been compelled to use GPL and no one seemed interested. We had to burn the project to the ground and start over with a new MIT licensed project. Now there's a flourishing community of plugin authors working with it. GPL being a viral license is the core problem, I think. I get the intent behind that clause, but developers tend to not enjoy being mandated to like that. I don't think GPL is bad, but it's not exactly pleasant either.
  - trinsic2 3y ago
    I don't think that's the fault of the license, its the fault of the world going in a less free direction.
    - distract8901 3y ago
      That doesn't really add up. The core problem of GPL is that it's viral and takes away freedom from downstream developers in favor of upstream freedom.
      - greffer 3y ago
        [flagged]
  - freedomben 3y ago
    Why would plugins have to also be GPL? The whole point of plugins is (typically) to allow distribution separately. IANAL but it would seem to me that unless you distribute your "plugin" as a statically linked binary that includes the main app, then the GPL would be irrelevant. If I'm wrong I'd love to be informed
    - trealira 3y ago
      According to the GPL FAQ, there aren't different license requirements for static linking vs dynamic linking. (The reason you can link glibc, stdc++, etc., which are licensed under the GPL, is because they carve out a "GCC runtime library exception" for such libraries, allowing one to choose a different license anyway). The FAQ also says that if "establish intimate communication by sharing complex data structures, or shipping complex data structures back and forth," then the that is essentially the same thing as dynamic linking, and so the GPL applies to your program as well. Link to the FAQ: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html The relevant FAQ questions: ---- > Does the GPL have different requirements for statically vs dynamically linked modules with a covered work? (#GPLStaticVsDynamic) > No. Linking a GPL covered work statically or dynamically with other modules is making a combined work based on the GPL covered work. Thus, the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License cover the whole combination. ---- > When is a program and its plug-ins considered a single combined program? (#GPLPlugins) >It depends on how the main program invokes its plug-ins. If the main program uses fork and exec to invoke plug-ins, and they establish intimate communication by sharing complex data structures, or shipping complex data structures back and forth, that can make them one single combined program. A main program that uses simple fork and exec to invoke plug-ins and does not establish intimate communication between them results in the plug-ins being a separate program. > If the main program dynamically links plug-ins, and they make function calls to each other and share data structures, we believe they form a single combined program, which must be treated as an extension of both the main program and the plug-ins. If the main program dynamically links plug-ins, but the communication between them is limited to invoking the ‘main’ function of the plug-in with some options and waiting for it to return, that is a borderline case. > Using shared memory to communicate with complex data structures is pretty much equivalent to dynamic linking. ---- > Where can I learn more about the GCC Runtime Library Exception? (#LibGCCException) > The GCC Runtime Library Exception covers libgcc, libstdc++, libfortran, libgomp, libdecnumber, and other libraries distributed with GCC. The exception is meant to allow people to distribute programs compiled with GCC under terms of their choice, even when parts of these libraries are included in the executable as part of the compilation process. To learn more, please read our FAQ about the GCC Runtime Library Exception (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception-faq.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception-faq.html).
- bigstrat2003 3y ago
  I don't use the GPL (and never have) because, like another poster said, it is less free. When I put work out there for someone to do what they wish with it, I don't think I should then say "oh unless you do xyz, I don't approve of that". That strikes me as hypocritical, and so I don't do it. I don't harp on anyone who uses the GPL, they gotta do what they think is right. But for me, the GPL was never a good choice for software licensing. And before anyone says "someone can make a closed fork of your code and then charge for it", I am aware of this. I also don't see the problem. My goals when sharing code are to share my work and help others by doing so. If some company uses my work to profit, I still have accomplished my goals. Moreover, others can still download my original code if they wish and reap the same benefits as the for-profit company did. This is a great outcome. Everyone benefits, nobody is harmed. While this scenario is often used as an argument that permissive licenses are bad, I think it is a very poor argument indeed.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    You're only looking at it from the perspective of the developer. The GPL freedoms are for the end user, not the dev.
  - greffer 3y ago
    [flagged]
- scythe 3y ago
  To me the biggest problem with GPL is compatibility. The majority of coding effort is commercial and will be for the foreseeable future. If the frameworks are GPL then the commercial interfaces will likely be incompatible with free software. Thankfully they are mostly BSD so commercial software works on free software systems and vice versa. For user-facing software, GPL is fine, but fewer people actually want to write that.
- rollcat 3y ago
  I choose MIT as my default license, because I don't like it when the license is longer and/or harder to understand than the program itself. Simplicity is underrated in software development; there's so much you can do with less.
Aeolun 3y ago
> [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Haw-Haw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Haw-Haw Honestly, my biggest takeaway from this article is that the guy was hanged for treason against a country he wasn’t even a citizen of…
- seabass-labrax 3y ago
  It is terrifying to me how strong the public desire for retribution is. Despite over five years of conflict, the history books show that there will still many who wanted more bloodshed to 'get even'. As what might be considered an even greater tragedy, there were loyal members of the various French resistance groups who were summarily executed for their 'involvement' in Nazi or Vichy institutions, when in fact they were spying for the French against those very institutions.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
For me it's a bit like the whole "woke-ism" thing. The vast majority of people enjoy each other and don't subscribe to the vitriol that comes from both sides. In that manner, the internet is a bit of an echo chamber where if you get all of your impressions of the world from it, you'd think people were constantly at each others throats. The news is the same way, they report negativity, so it has a real tendency to make you start thinking of the world in such a negative way. That's not to say there aren't real threats out there, but the vast majority of people are just trying to get through their day. This happens to police officers too, most of their interactions with people are negative due to the nature of their work, over time that starts being their default position towards people. I'll never forget the time I walked into a bakery and decided to get a cupcake for the police officer sitting in his car outside the shop (he was blocking the alley, unsure why). The change in his face from defensiveness to pure joy when I walked up to this vehicle was easily worth the money spent.
- seabass-labrax 3y ago
  There's a positive aspect to employing police officers to be present even when there is no tangible risk of crime or danger. Where I live, it's extremely unusual to ever see a 'bobby on the beat', so when I recently visited a city with thirty or more police officers with riot vans congregated at the docks, ironically I felt slightly uncomfortable - what mortal danger could be present around the corner to justify so much police attention? It turned out to just be a big football match, so there was not such a huge danger after all and the police would no doubt be able to diffuse any disturbance immediately. If there had been no police around, it would never have occurred to me that there was a risk, even though I would have been tangibly less safe without their presence.
- firewolf34 3y ago
  from the "assume ignorance before maliciousness" standpoint, a lot of the impression you speak of is just a fact of us humans reporting on the (perceived) more critical news, (perhaps also maybe the more profitable news) - but is more (in my opinion) a natural result of the news having limited time/bandwidth to report on a near-infinite content production source (the world) A side effect (and the end result) is that we all end up having poor [Bayesian priors](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_probability https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_probability) in our heads - this disproportionate reporting practice at large impacts our understanding of the world, as you describe. And I bet there's a feedback loop: the more skewed our model of the world, the more we will produce/consume skewed content. I think this is not something you can ever truly do completely away with because of the many factors that it arises from, not limited to our psychological biases that tend us towards liking or interacting with certain form of content more than others... but certainly there should be more controls.
93po 3y ago
It’s unfortunate that the message discussing enemies was flagged. Maybe it needed to be said in a better way? The US government is undeniably often working against the best interests of its citizens. Corporations, corporate news, and advertisers are also working against our best interests. Im not sure any mindful and reasonable person would refute this. However I will be charitable in saying that I don’t think they’re making us hopelessly anxious to subjugate us. They’re doing it because it’s profitable
- mgbmtl 3y ago
  I didn't flag/mod the comment, but I think it errs towards conspiracy theories. I'm not American, and I understand the American government does evil things sometimes, but it also does a lot of good things for its citizens. It builds roads, keeps the skies clear, funds education, health systems, sues tech giants when they go too far, tries to manage the speculation/money markets, etc. To say "undeniably often working against the best interests of its citizens" is very hyperbolic. Most would probably argue that the government does not do enough, even conservatives (ex: controlling abortion or bathrooms, not that I agree). The news are also not there to demoralize you, not as a primary objective. Anxiety and negative news do sell ads. I find public radio such as NPR do a wonderful job of balancing point of views, giving the facts, and provide some hope by explaining the underlying issues and possible solutions. Where I live, public radio is the only non-ragebait media that constantly puts pressures on whatever government is in power, and explains various points of views (while admittedly being more centrist editorially, angering both hard-left and hard-right). I totally agree however with doing whatever it is you are good at, and that's a way to work towards improving the world.
  - foobarian 3y ago
    Think about what kind of life our grand- or grand-grandparents had. They went from horse-drawn carriages and muddy streets, to modern cars on roads in their lifetime. Even us older neckbeards went from 8-bit computers to modern PCs on modern networks. But I feel like this progress has reached the end of the S-curve and there is a feeling of bitterness and disappointment slowly seeping into our collective conscious, whether we realize it or not. The other things about propaganda and modern news I think are more side effects.
otp209 3y ago
> As you do, I find the discourse around tech to be a pit of dismissiveness, avoidance, denial, resignation, and learned-helplessness I have a whole tirade on this, but I completely agree. It seemed while going through college that the whole prescriptivism and general attitudes in tech are built in such a way so as to discourage certain mindsets which the industry DESPERATELY needs, and my hypothesis is that not having representation of those mindsets across the board has contributed to a much of the degradation of UX over time (along with collective laziness of course; low level languages being more work to use, much as I enjoy high level conveniences myself).
- intelVISA 3y ago
  An unfortunately large subset of too-comfortable tech workers have decreed the right way is to: never reinvent the wheel, always import, and avoid 'the hard stuff'. The sad bit? They're well compensated for this learned inability, so arguably they made the truly smart choice here. To the blessed few who reject this apathy and continue building new innovations? I salute you o7
  - fragmede 3y ago
    An unfortunately large subset of tech workers have decreed the right way is to always reinvent the wheel, never import, and avoid 'reading documentation'. The worst bit? They're very well compensated for it, so arguably they made the true smart choice here. To the blessed few who reject NIH syndrome and use existing solutions? I salute you!
    - intelVISA 3y ago
      You got me this time, fragmede. :)
      - fragmede 3y ago
        I am guilty of both, naturally :)
    - 3y ago

Eggsellence 3y ago

[flagged]

phkahler 3y ago

>> As you do, I find the discourse around tech to be a pit of dismissiveness, avoidance, denial, resignation, and learned-helplessness. Do you think this is why people are abandoning the GPL license in favor of MIT/BSD? Something about the fight the GPL aims to win being a hopeless fantasy? In the face of the sentiment you and OP express, I'd think GPL usage would be widespread.

nonrandomstring 3y ago
I think opinions around software licenses are limited to us hackers, and the actively code-publishing subset of us, moreover. From my POV the GPL certainly seems alive and well, and the ideology of the Free Software movement remains sound and strong. What I'm alluding to is the wider public. In <podcast-i-dare-not-mention> we literally walked around town interviewing young and old. Soon as I can, I'll share the results in a HN submission.
- carapace 3y ago
  > Soon as I can, I'll share the results in a HN submission. Please do!
ynniv 3y ago
As a developer my problem with the GPL is that it's less free than other licenses. It's an interesting legal hack, but it can only succeed in its goals by boiling the ocean. I just want to write things, and sometimes making money involves not publishing all of your source code. Having to choose between options and idealism limits the popularity of GPL projects.
- binary132 3y ago
  Isn't that kind of the point? The purpose of GPL and Free Software (which it has actually had resounding success in) is to develop a free commons which will stay free and not be exploited. It's not for you to exploit to make a buck, and if that excludes your project, that's fine. There are lots of things I would never consider free-licensing, but I think people badly miss the point of free software because they are stuck thinking only in terms of their own needs and personal benefit. Again, if you don't want to use or contribute to free software, that is perfectly reasonable. But just bear in mind that the Linux kernel and GCC are incredibly valuable tools which are firmly in the commons and will remain free, and which you have benefited enormously from the use and free availability of.
  - bigstrat2003 3y ago
    The GPL is not required for such a commons to flourish. Most Rust projects are published under a permissive license, and that scene is flourishing just fine. I think that open source software as a whole, not the GPL specifically, is what has enabled the flourishing you mention. It seems to me that in the counterfactual world where Linus chose to use the BSD license for his kernel, Linux would thrive just as much as it does today.
    - pama 3y ago
      I don’t like hypothetical counterfactuals but of course it is your choice to use them. It is hard to meaningfully compare recent programs, rust or otherwise, with established behemoths like Linux, gcc, Emacs, etc, that did the heavy lifting and allowed the playing field to remain even over multiple decades. If gcc did not exist it is not clear at all how a hypothetical computerized world would develop.
jwells89 3y ago
I think a lot of distaste towards GPL comes from devs with corporate day jobs who feel frustrated that anything GPL licensed is functionally off-limits at work because there’s no way legal would approve of using it, and certainly would not approve of open sourcing whatever project is built with the GPL thing. I can see where such an individual might think to themselves, “I don’t want to put other devs in my position in the same pickle, so I’m licensing my thing as MIT/BSD”.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- downWidOutaFite 3y ago
  Right, corporate lawyers are ideological activists trying to kill GPL. But the campaign to denigrate the ideological activists on the other side is much more successful.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    > Right, corporate lawyers are ideological activists trying to kill GPL. This is a pretty cynical "assume the worst" outlook, and it badly violates Occam's Razor. I think a much more likely reason that corporate lawyers disapprove of the GPL is that one of their main jobs (in some cases their entire job) is to protect the company's IP, and the GPL is a huge threat to IP. Any lawyer who didn't advise avoiding the GPL would be negligent. I personally love the GPL and encourage its use whenever possible, but I avoid it in decisions for my employers and customers because of the risks. I think generally speaking the risks are not nearly as serious as most people I think, but they do exist (otherwise the copyleft philosophy of the GPL would be pointless!)
    - downWidOutaFite 3y ago
      I've seen too many cases, recent example comes to mind is apple switching from bash to zsh, that are done not for technical or even business reason but ideological.
- 3y ago
distract8901 3y ago
Copyleft was a good idea, but its real world utility is a lot less than anyone would like. I once inherited a GPL project, but I couldn't muster any community interest in working with it. Plugin authors would have been compelled to use GPL and no one seemed interested. We had to burn the project to the ground and start over with a new MIT licensed project. Now there's a flourishing community of plugin authors working with it. GPL being a viral license is the core problem, I think. I get the intent behind that clause, but developers tend to not enjoy being mandated to like that. I don't think GPL is bad, but it's not exactly pleasant either.
- trinsic2 3y ago
  I don't think that's the fault of the license, its the fault of the world going in a less free direction.
  - distract8901 3y ago
    That doesn't really add up. The core problem of GPL is that it's viral and takes away freedom from downstream developers in favor of upstream freedom.
    - greffer 3y ago
      [flagged]
- freedomben 3y ago
  Why would plugins have to also be GPL? The whole point of plugins is (typically) to allow distribution separately. IANAL but it would seem to me that unless you distribute your "plugin" as a statically linked binary that includes the main app, then the GPL would be irrelevant. If I'm wrong I'd love to be informed
  - trealira 3y ago
    According to the GPL FAQ, there aren't different license requirements for static linking vs dynamic linking. (The reason you can link glibc, stdc++, etc., which are licensed under the GPL, is because they carve out a "GCC runtime library exception" for such libraries, allowing one to choose a different license anyway). The FAQ also says that if "establish intimate communication by sharing complex data structures, or shipping complex data structures back and forth," then the that is essentially the same thing as dynamic linking, and so the GPL applies to your program as well. Link to the FAQ: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html The relevant FAQ questions: ---- > Does the GPL have different requirements for statically vs dynamically linked modules with a covered work? (#GPLStaticVsDynamic) > No. Linking a GPL covered work statically or dynamically with other modules is making a combined work based on the GPL covered work. Thus, the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License cover the whole combination. ---- > When is a program and its plug-ins considered a single combined program? (#GPLPlugins) >It depends on how the main program invokes its plug-ins. If the main program uses fork and exec to invoke plug-ins, and they establish intimate communication by sharing complex data structures, or shipping complex data structures back and forth, that can make them one single combined program. A main program that uses simple fork and exec to invoke plug-ins and does not establish intimate communication between them results in the plug-ins being a separate program. > If the main program dynamically links plug-ins, and they make function calls to each other and share data structures, we believe they form a single combined program, which must be treated as an extension of both the main program and the plug-ins. If the main program dynamically links plug-ins, but the communication between them is limited to invoking the ‘main’ function of the plug-in with some options and waiting for it to return, that is a borderline case. > Using shared memory to communicate with complex data structures is pretty much equivalent to dynamic linking. ---- > Where can I learn more about the GCC Runtime Library Exception? (#LibGCCException) > The GCC Runtime Library Exception covers libgcc, libstdc++, libfortran, libgomp, libdecnumber, and other libraries distributed with GCC. The exception is meant to allow people to distribute programs compiled with GCC under terms of their choice, even when parts of these libraries are included in the executable as part of the compilation process. To learn more, please read our FAQ about the GCC Runtime Library Exception (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception-faq.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception-faq.html).
bigstrat2003 3y ago
I don't use the GPL (and never have) because, like another poster said, it is less free. When I put work out there for someone to do what they wish with it, I don't think I should then say "oh unless you do xyz, I don't approve of that". That strikes me as hypocritical, and so I don't do it. I don't harp on anyone who uses the GPL, they gotta do what they think is right. But for me, the GPL was never a good choice for software licensing. And before anyone says "someone can make a closed fork of your code and then charge for it", I am aware of this. I also don't see the problem. My goals when sharing code are to share my work and help others by doing so. If some company uses my work to profit, I still have accomplished my goals. Moreover, others can still download my original code if they wish and reap the same benefits as the for-profit company did. This is a great outcome. Everyone benefits, nobody is harmed. While this scenario is often used as an argument that permissive licenses are bad, I think it is a very poor argument indeed.
- freedomben 3y ago
  You're only looking at it from the perspective of the developer. The GPL freedoms are for the end user, not the dev.
- greffer 3y ago
  [flagged]
scythe 3y ago
To me the biggest problem with GPL is compatibility. The majority of coding effort is commercial and will be for the foreseeable future. If the frameworks are GPL then the commercial interfaces will likely be incompatible with free software. Thankfully they are mostly BSD so commercial software works on free software systems and vice versa. For user-facing software, GPL is fine, but fewer people actually want to write that.
rollcat 3y ago
I choose MIT as my default license, because I don't like it when the license is longer and/or harder to understand than the program itself. Simplicity is underrated in software development; there's so much you can do with less.

Aeolun 3y ago

> [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Haw-Haw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Haw-Haw Honestly, my biggest takeaway from this article is that the guy was hanged for treason against a country he wasn’t even a citizen of…

seabass-labrax 3y ago
It is terrifying to me how strong the public desire for retribution is. Despite over five years of conflict, the history books show that there will still many who wanted more bloodshed to 'get even'. As what might be considered an even greater tragedy, there were loyal members of the various French resistance groups who were summarily executed for their 'involvement' in Nazi or Vichy institutions, when in fact they were spying for the French against those very institutions.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

For me it's a bit like the whole "woke-ism" thing. The vast majority of people enjoy each other and don't subscribe to the vitriol that comes from both sides. In that manner, the internet is a bit of an echo chamber where if you get all of your impressions of the world from it, you'd think people were constantly at each others throats. The news is the same way, they report negativity, so it has a real tendency to make you start thinking of the world in such a negative way. That's not to say there aren't real threats out there, but the vast majority of people are just trying to get through their day. This happens to police officers too, most of their interactions with people are negative due to the nature of their work, over time that starts being their default position towards people. I'll never forget the time I walked into a bakery and decided to get a cupcake for the police officer sitting in his car outside the shop (he was blocking the alley, unsure why). The change in his face from defensiveness to pure joy when I walked up to this vehicle was easily worth the money spent.

seabass-labrax 3y ago
There's a positive aspect to employing police officers to be present even when there is no tangible risk of crime or danger. Where I live, it's extremely unusual to ever see a 'bobby on the beat', so when I recently visited a city with thirty or more police officers with riot vans congregated at the docks, ironically I felt slightly uncomfortable - what mortal danger could be present around the corner to justify so much police attention? It turned out to just be a big football match, so there was not such a huge danger after all and the police would no doubt be able to diffuse any disturbance immediately. If there had been no police around, it would never have occurred to me that there was a risk, even though I would have been tangibly less safe without their presence.
firewolf34 3y ago
from the "assume ignorance before maliciousness" standpoint, a lot of the impression you speak of is just a fact of us humans reporting on the (perceived) more critical news, (perhaps also maybe the more profitable news) - but is more (in my opinion) a natural result of the news having limited time/bandwidth to report on a near-infinite content production source (the world) A side effect (and the end result) is that we all end up having poor [Bayesian priors](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_probability https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_probability) in our heads - this disproportionate reporting practice at large impacts our understanding of the world, as you describe. And I bet there's a feedback loop: the more skewed our model of the world, the more we will produce/consume skewed content. I think this is not something you can ever truly do completely away with because of the many factors that it arises from, not limited to our psychological biases that tend us towards liking or interacting with certain form of content more than others... but certainly there should be more controls.

93po 3y ago

It’s unfortunate that the message discussing enemies was flagged. Maybe it needed to be said in a better way? The US government is undeniably often working against the best interests of its citizens. Corporations, corporate news, and advertisers are also working against our best interests. Im not sure any mindful and reasonable person would refute this. However I will be charitable in saying that I don’t think they’re making us hopelessly anxious to subjugate us. They’re doing it because it’s profitable

mgbmtl 3y ago
I didn't flag/mod the comment, but I think it errs towards conspiracy theories. I'm not American, and I understand the American government does evil things sometimes, but it also does a lot of good things for its citizens. It builds roads, keeps the skies clear, funds education, health systems, sues tech giants when they go too far, tries to manage the speculation/money markets, etc. To say "undeniably often working against the best interests of its citizens" is very hyperbolic. Most would probably argue that the government does not do enough, even conservatives (ex: controlling abortion or bathrooms, not that I agree). The news are also not there to demoralize you, not as a primary objective. Anxiety and negative news do sell ads. I find public radio such as NPR do a wonderful job of balancing point of views, giving the facts, and provide some hope by explaining the underlying issues and possible solutions. Where I live, public radio is the only non-ragebait media that constantly puts pressures on whatever government is in power, and explains various points of views (while admittedly being more centrist editorially, angering both hard-left and hard-right). I totally agree however with doing whatever it is you are good at, and that's a way to work towards improving the world.
- foobarian 3y ago
  Think about what kind of life our grand- or grand-grandparents had. They went from horse-drawn carriages and muddy streets, to modern cars on roads in their lifetime. Even us older neckbeards went from 8-bit computers to modern PCs on modern networks. But I feel like this progress has reached the end of the S-curve and there is a feeling of bitterness and disappointment slowly seeping into our collective conscious, whether we realize it or not. The other things about propaganda and modern news I think are more side effects.

otp209 3y ago

> As you do, I find the discourse around tech to be a pit of dismissiveness, avoidance, denial, resignation, and learned-helplessness I have a whole tirade on this, but I completely agree. It seemed while going through college that the whole prescriptivism and general attitudes in tech are built in such a way so as to discourage certain mindsets which the industry DESPERATELY needs, and my hypothesis is that not having representation of those mindsets across the board has contributed to a much of the degradation of UX over time (along with collective laziness of course; low level languages being more work to use, much as I enjoy high level conveniences myself).

intelVISA 3y ago
An unfortunately large subset of too-comfortable tech workers have decreed the right way is to: never reinvent the wheel, always import, and avoid 'the hard stuff'. The sad bit? They're well compensated for this learned inability, so arguably they made the truly smart choice here. To the blessed few who reject this apathy and continue building new innovations? I salute you o7
- fragmede 3y ago
  An unfortunately large subset of tech workers have decreed the right way is to always reinvent the wheel, never import, and avoid 'reading documentation'. The worst bit? They're very well compensated for it, so arguably they made the true smart choice here. To the blessed few who reject NIH syndrome and use existing solutions? I salute you!
  - intelVISA 3y ago
    You got me this time, fragmede. :)
    - fragmede 3y ago
      I am guilty of both, naturally :)
  - 3y ago