Obviously a biased source, but his brother does not thing it was suicide either. That's to say he's right. People do commit suicide in jail or prison, but it does seem weird that a high value prisoner was not properly monitored for suicide-watch. Technically he was, but the Cameras were not working and the guys watching him were very lackadaisical about it.

That was not the question. Your question was: "Does a balanced diet include fast food?"

The answer to that is simple: No.

A balanced diet is a healthy mix of essential nutrients. Highly processes foods rich in fat or sugar are not part of it [1]. Most advisories merely acknowledge that a large part of the population doesn't want to stop eating this stuff completely. But the real goal should always be zero.

[1] https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-guidelines-and-fo...

> Or is this just over zealous hyperbole?

I'm referencing Jonathan Haidt's work: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/facebooks-...

But regardless, I find it pretty ridiculous to claim that us software engineers don't have a massive impact on the world. We've inserted software into every crevice of human civilisation, from my washing machine and how I interact with loved ones, all the way up to global finance and voting systems. You think technology companies would be the largest industry on the planet if we didn't have an impact on people's lives?

Leaving the social media point aside, all I'm arguing is that when harm actually occurs due to negligence, companies needs to actually be held responsible. Just like in every other industry that doesn't have convenient EULAs to protect them from liability. For example, if Medibank leaks the health records of all of their customers, they should be punished in some way as a result - either fined by a regulatory agency or sued by their customers. Right now, they shift all of the harm caused by negligent behaviour onto their customers. And as a result, they have no incentive to actually fix their crappy software.

I don't want companies the world over to look at things like that and say "Well, I guess Medibank got away with leaking all their customer's data. Lets invest even less time and effort into information security". I don't want my data getting leaked to be a natural and inevitable consequence of using someone's app.

Even from a selfish point of view, people will slowly use less and less information technology as a result, because they have no ability to know which companies they can trust. This is already happening in the IoT space. And thats ultimately terrible for our industry.

Social media would like a word. The suicide rates of teen girls have tripled since the introduction of social media. To say nothing of the corrosive force on democracy and our ability to make sense of the world as a society.

A building collapsing might kill 10 people. A rare tragedy. Social media impacts billions. Even if you want to downplay the negative impact on each person, the total impact across the globe is massive.

Software has eaten the world, for good and ill. I think it’s high time we treated it seriously and took some responsibility for how our work impacts society.

That's literally what 23&me do, they send you a breakdown of what % of various ethnicities you are based on your DNA. E.g. 95% Northern European, 5% Ashkenazi Jew.

> 17,000 Palestinians have been killed, around 70% being women and children.

Unfortunately, 1) these numbers come from Hamas; 2) count militants; 3) a large fraction of "children" appear to be militants.

> while the Gazan health ministry cares for the health and survival of their people.

Every real government tracks civilian and military deaths separately. Here we're given one misleading lump of a number (that includes significant incentive to lie).

> Also, Israel keeps track of every person born and dead in Gaza, they have state-wide surveillance there, they could have chosen to send in surgical strike forces and taken out the militants strategically,

I think this is unrealistic and any effort to do so would be suicide.

> Netanyahu has also said their military won't leave Gaza, after the war.

Netanyahu has said just about every possible thing depending upon whom he's been talking to. There's no disagreement he and his government are trash.

The issue is the definition of 'better'. If you think access to food, medication, education, higher life expectancy, then yes.

IMHO though, a more fitting defition of 'better' for the human condition is the amount of happiness you experience while being alife (i.e. decoupled from life expectancy).

I would then conclude (and I am really happy to be proved wrong) that the developed world being/becoming better is considerably more difficult to argue for.

Depression and sucidides in first world countries, the ones that tick all the intial boxes, are a highs not experienced since WWII. [1] is just from a quick googling and US-only. You won't have trouble finding much more evidence to support this though, for many other 1st world countries.

I would bet there is a direct link to this; between making GPD the driving factor for a country's governance vs. e.g. happiness of its citizens. Look no further than Scandinavian countries (Norway is the exeption, not declining but at least also not increasing)[2].

[1] https://time.com/5609124/us-suicide-rate-increase/

[2] https://tidsskriftet.no/en/2019/08/kronikk/why-suicide-rate-...

> Pyrimethamine has been available since 1953.[20] In 2010, GlaxoSmithKline sold the marketing rights for Daraprim to CorePharma.

If Wikipedia is correct, that drug was long ago out of patent doghouse. I don’t know why USA (government, nonprofit, bill gates I don’t care who) doesn’t just make generics. Ditto insulin, that is another glaring example of that insanity.

You could argue (very reasonably) that one of key requirements for free market is a freedom not to buy. That is a potential choice, but few billion of years of evolution says a very bad choice. Thus rather special status of healthcare in pretty much every country.

Back to the issue of capitalist drug research: maybe it’s just me, but most of the new drugs seem to come from USA. Other countries with less insane healthcare (not even sure if care is the correct word in USA context) system (e.g. NHS in UK) don’t seem to produce new drugs.

Ergo, this bad system seems less bad than others, at least as producing new stuff goes.