_petronius

10 ms·

61.
by _petronius 5y ago
Ah, my friend, but you can generalize: both from the cultural (Europe in general has stronger welfare states than most US federal and state systems provide), and because members of the EU are bound to EU-wide rules on worker rights. Pluuus,
62.
by _petronius 6y ago
People never really left Rome: describing it as "post-apocalyptic" is IMO a bit misleading (a real post-apocalyptic cultural transition looks a lot more like what happened to the north American native cultures in the aftermath o
63.
by _petronius 6y ago
> but chose to keep the citizenship into adulthood, presumably acquiring a passport or other citizenship documents That is ... not how citizenship works. Once you are a citizen, it can be very difficult to get rid of that status (souce:
64.
by _petronius 6y ago
Unnecessarily detailed nitpick: Data uses contractions throughout the dialogue of TNG -- there is just one episode ("Datalore" it might have been?) where they decide to make it a plot point that he doesn't use them as a way
65.
by _petronius 6y ago
> but this conversation is taking place on hacker news, where I daresay the consensus is opposed to palantir and other companies working with law enforcement I don't share your confidence of that assessment, but it would warm my hea
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by _petronius 6y ago
Ah you see, the mistake you make is thinking I am interested in defending my position to the unreasonable. You can take any position you like, I don't have to entertain that position, or even get dragged into a discussion about it. It&
67.
by _petronius 6y ago
> It deems agnosticism untenable Agnosticism is untenable in some scenarios, sure. E.g., when you have an oppressive status quo, and the options are to resist it and argue for change, or accept the ways things are, and thereby support th
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by _petronius 6y ago
How much power the government has is certainly one line of argument. I'm more interested in how we hold the government accountable for the exercise of the power it has. In general, I don't think limiting the power or size of the g
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by _petronius 6y ago
> I think people responsible here are still the ones that decided to buy it. They are responsible the market exists. Also not a mystery since those people are mostly evaluated by how many people they put behind bars. That's letting
70.
by _petronius 6y ago
I don't think the devil needs any more advocates, tbh, and I kind of wish people would stop refusing to take responsibility for the arguments they put forth by hedging in that way. > Powerful, data comprehension Correlation, maybe -
71.
by _petronius 6y ago
I think instead of trying to break names apart from one input, the best strategy is to consider the various uses you need and provide that many inputs (in a previous job writing software for art galleries, this was our solution). So for exa
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by _petronius 6y ago
As Thomas Mann said, everything is politics. I would add that has always been the case. You can get frustrated about that fact, or you can use it as an opportunity for learning about how and why that is so, and gain a deeper understanding o
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by _petronius 6y ago
Or maybe (2n) 2 as difficult?
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by _petronius 6y ago
The force vector from a polar ice sheet doesn't get cancelled out by the rest of the earth though (because they aren't pointing in opposite directions). Plus, you have to account for the force of the ice sheet, plus the water it a
75.
by _petronius 6y ago
> society may voluntarily decide you're an asshole and show you the door For all people who support the "marketplace of ideas" argument (which I don't, not least because there is fairly compelling research that docume
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by _petronius 7y ago
Sure, but hopefully the choice isn't a binary one between "lack of alignment" versus "management/leadership dictates", since that would be evidence of a rather toxic team culture.
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by _petronius 7y ago
> So, let's cave in to peer pressure or management dictates and continue down the wrong path (technically/socially)? Seems like a very unfair restatement of what the author said. I would read that as "it's more import
78.
by _petronius 7y ago
> The Chinese bureaucracy has millennia of experience controlling large groups of people in the same way that the Chatholic Church has millennia of experience preaching. This at least a complete misunderstanding of the history of the Cat
79.
by _petronius 7y ago
That's a boneheaded excuse: if the comment was about improving privacy it would be highlighting mitigation strategies, not focussing on exploiting potential vulnerabilities.
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by _petronius 7y ago
This is some serious “too interested in seeing if you could, and not stopping to wonder if you should” content. What possible positives are there in exploring how to de-anonymize people whose life and freedom requires anonymity, and who are
81.
by _petronius 7y ago
Ah, cool. It wouldn't surprise me if English borrowed that from French, actually.
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by _petronius 7y ago
Unusual in modern orthography, and I have only seen it in the New Yorker house style (the diaeresis indicates that the second vowel should be pronounced separately, which is quite different to how that mark is used in a number of other lang
83.
by _petronius 7y ago
About human sacrifice, they were extremely squeamish! Bernal Díaz describes with no small amount of horror the Spaniards reaction to the human sacrifice and the ritual use of blood by the priests.
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by _petronius 7y ago
At least for the first conquistadores, this is wildly incorrect. It is true that they saw the Mesoamerican culture as wrong (particularly the human sacrifice bit), and put the conquest of territory for Spain as of high importance, but their
85.
by _petronius 7y ago
You may be assuming you know my viewpoint without me having presented it in full, but anyway I wasn't looking to argue in bad faith, I guess I just see a strong difference between "successful company that has made money and cool p
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by _petronius 7y ago
> Google has provided incalculable value to the world I'm not convinced by this statement, and I'd be genuinely interested to hear your reasoning behind it. Is it specific products? Specific technologies? Although Google has bu
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by _petronius 7y ago
I agree with this, and I think there is an interesting generalisation that can be pulled out of it: something’s which are fine (harmless, neutral, or even good) at a small individual scale become problematic or terrible when done at the sca
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by _petronius 7y ago
Well, my bank is a co-operative with a corporate duty to invest in social and ecological initiatives, so other models are possible (and successful!).
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by _petronius 7y ago
This is why I will always bank with the old-school banks. Being able to reach someone on the phone -- or even turn up at a branch -- makes it a lot harder for them to ignore you when there is a major issue that needs resolving. But then, my
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by _petronius 7y ago
> France doesn't control its borders. This is reductive to the point of misleading. France does control its borders, but has chosen to accept the freedom of movement of Schengen, become a party to the Dublin Regulation, and particip

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