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kordless commented on Comcast is injecting 400+ lines of JavaScript into web pages   forums.xfinity.com/t5/Cus... · Posted by u/CSDude
dang · 8 years ago
Treating anyone this rudely is a bannable offence on Hacker News. Please take the civility requirement more deeply to heart (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and please don't do this again.

If a fellow community member has a first-hand involvement with a situation under discussion, such as working for a company that some people are mad at or does some wrong thing, we're all responsible for reacting responsibly. Otherwise bad things happen, such as first-hand observers being scared to post because they'll get lashed out at, and the already-weak community bonds we have here getting weaker. We all know what the culture of online shaming has led to and it's all our job not to do it on HN.

kordless · 8 years ago
> We all know what the culture of online shaming has led to and it's all our job not to do it on HN.

This is, in and of itself, a blaming statement. Blaming statements, such as the one contained in the comment you replied to, are a result of a) dissonance and b) inability to resolve the dissonance.

It is, in fact, unknown what the culture of online shaming has led to in our society. In fact, I'd hazard "shaming" online is actually just raw blame provided by some rationalized thought process driven by Internet interactions themselves, not the people reacting. See This Video Will Make You Angry on YouTube for context. Screwing with people's Internet in contextually what could be considered "wrong" behavior becomes highly polarizing. In as much as someone coughs because they smoke, people blaming is a result of a larger problem, perhaps related to the fitness of memes and some people's weakness in being hacked emotionally by memes with higher sophistication. Again, that problem is noted by the dissonance and inability to resolve it, but the behaviors emerging from those who are "infected" by the thoughts are not exactly theirs to bear alone. We blamed the tobacco industry for smoking. Why can we not blame the employees who are providing the rationalizations for bad behavior? One might argue that they shouldn't be blamed because they have no choice in the matter. It may be their job to argue otherwise for the company.

The irony here is that vast majority of the denizens of HN are likely responsible for creating most of the "mess" we're in today by writing software without considering the long term effects on consciousness and perception of reality. That "mess" would be defined as means, by algorithms or neural networks, to attempt to exploit weaknesses in human nature to spread other's beliefs in a unnatural way. Growth hacking. In some cases, like Comcast, those beliefs are rooted in sophisticated rationalizations which sound good when limited in scope. But! I don't care what anyone says about it, changing the content of a page which, when requested from one place returns one thing and when requested from another (which ones pay for I might add) returns another thing entirely is a violation of TRUST. At least it is to me. I like consistency in my data.

If one of the "members" of this group we call HN wants to make a blaming statement against someone who is defending this irrational logic, then I say let them blame! How else are we to uncover the dissonance and solve it? Or, perhaps, that dissonance is desired to be left in place by our complicit behaviors trying to be "nice" to each other.

I've suggested before social media sites could benefit from a "this is a blaming statement" flag on articles or comments. I stand by that assertion today. Logging back out again. Thank you for all the hard work that goes into running this place.

kordless commented on LogDevice: a distributed data store for logs   code.facebook.com/posts/3... · Posted by u/vquemener
sctb · 9 years ago
We've had many discussions about licensing issues, but this isn't one of them. Please don't post off topic and then complain about downvotes—it breaks the guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

kordless · 9 years ago
> we've had many

> don't post off topic

Users of HN, please note "we" is Facebook and Facebook, or a representative of Facebook, is telling us what we can and can't discuss here.

This is why I quit posting here and use /r/hackernews on Reddit for my links. However, I occasionally make an appearance when I see patterns emerge, such as control where we didn't assume control existed.

kordless commented on I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity   medium.com/the-mission/im... · Posted by u/317070
tptacek · 9 years ago
No, you're relying on a false dichotomy here. The logic in your post suggests that if I believe it's unreasonable to expect gender parity at Google, I must also believe that the current gender distribution at Google is OK. That doesn't follow logically.
kordless · 9 years ago
The downvotes here indicate logic doesn't always follow where there exists polarity in a belief of "truths". While you may be correct in your assertions, you will still lose the argument because it's not what people want to hear. My own downvotes aside (within 30 seconds, no less) is the point is that some topics become "logically lodged" in a jam and cannot be freed by open discourse.
kordless commented on Learn Ethereum smart contract programming   ethereumdev.io/... · Posted by u/ym705
BaronSamedi · 9 years ago
Ethereum reminds me of what happened to the web: the desire to add code. The blockchain by itself wasn't good enough so Ethereum added code to it, just like HTML wasn't good enough so people added applets, Flash, and JavaScript.

I understand why they would want to do this but I think it gets the priorities wrong. It prioritizes features and functionality over security and reliability. Given how hostile the Internet has become I think this is a mistake.

My guess is that Ethereum is only a couple of scandals away from being perceived as a fundamentally insecure platform. Bitcoin has its own problems and it may not survive either. Perhaps another cryoto currency can learn from the mistakes of both and deliver something better?

kordless · 9 years ago
Bitcoin has code. The language is called Script. It lacks loops, however.
kordless commented on McClure steps back at 500Startups after internal sexual misconduct investigation   techcrunch.com/2017/06/30... · Posted by u/janober
rmason · 9 years ago
The one person that I would have never suspected is Dave McClure. Here's a guy who didn't fit the investment world and he was smart and hustled his way in.

He started 500 startups with a female co-founder and said he chose her because she was smarter. He saw an opening for himself and talked about playing Moneyball for venture capital. He spoke often in interviews about chasing investments among founders who didn't fit the profile but were eminently backable and that included women. He blogged publicly about his insecurities and campaigned for diversity.

https://500hats.com/commitment-to-diversity-d8a4ac8b1c12

Guess it proves you can't really know a person through their writings and interviews. He was someone that I admired and I'm more than a little disappointed.

kordless · 9 years ago
You are making a statement of surprise that someone who "didn't fit the investment world", who was "smart" and a "hustler" would not make such a mistake while navigating the interface between his personal life and his business/career. I say "personal life" given these advances indicate an IMPROPER blurring of personal need, including a physical attraction response, which was then carried over into day-to-day business. It is this response that creates a double bind for the women who are involved in situation. Double binds are bad news, whether they are intentional, such as those used by Trump, or unintentional, such as those created by those who do not manage their personal lives well.

Why is it that we EVER may assume, by someone's external behaviors including their writings, videos and interviews, that we may "know" an individual? Why would we ever assume a level of trust in how they conduct themselves in their personal lives by their outward actions? Why would we assume someone who did "fit" the investment world would be more likely to act in a similar improper manner? How is it that we actually fail to acknowledge that each of us has a line that, when it is crossed, we are capable of making horrible mistakes? Why is it that Western culture has formed a view of mistakes as something to be avoided at all cost, as opposed to an opportunity for great learning?

I came out of my self-imposed exile here to post this because I think it's important to draw a line and indicate a social community such as HN (or Twitter) are woefully inadequate to deal with these types of issues in a meaningful way and to do so without a highly divisive conversation forming. (This is not to say the message should not be delivered strongly to anyone listening, however.) All that comes of these discussions is blame and division. Evidence of that is show here, now, in the polarized comments.

The only people who can judge Dave honestly here now are the victims, his co-workers and himself. I do have empathy for those involved, but my emotional contributions here are pointless, given the scale and reach of this news.

kordless commented on Insights into High Frequency Trading from the Virtu IPO [pdf]   online.wsj.com/public/res... · Posted by u/chollida1
kordless · 9 years ago
Electronic arbitrage. Interesting, scalable with compute, and highly risky, if you aren't careful or fast enough.

Dead Comment

kordless commented on Coinbase adds support for Litecoin   techcrunch.com/2017/05/03... · Posted by u/tmlee
flyingfences · 9 years ago
> which benefits greatly from features provided by Segwit

Which is only possible because of the features provided by SegWit.

kordless · 9 years ago
Actually, that's not technically true. FWIU, Lighting could be run on both Bitcoin and Litecoin today, but issues with transaction malleability could cause it to be less than trustworthy, for some use cases. So, Segwit, which fixes transaction mailability by moving the header in the transaction to it's own section, enables a higher trust Lightning network to be deployed, on top of a more trustworthy blockchain.
kordless commented on Roger Penrose on Why Consciousness Does Not Compute   nautil.us/issue/47/consci... · Posted by u/dnetesn
inputcoffee · 9 years ago
The Penrose Fallacy:

1. We don't understand Quantum Mechanics

2. We don't understand the mind

3. Therefore QM explains the mind

Or as Steve Harnad once said, he takes all the embarrassments and failings of one field and marries them with another.

kordless · 9 years ago
The connecting of disparate ideas is irrational in the individual. It's only when a group of people temporarily accept that those concepts may make sense that things get done. Given consciousness is directly responsible for giving us an individual's consciousness, and that consciousness (either by group or individual) must try to understand itself using the effect it is trying to describe, the concepts may NOT make sense when getting things done. This may be why philosophy is frequently taken as quackery, and non-scientific. ;)

My HN profile has carried my thoughts on Penrose and Hammeroff's theories for some time now. Good to see it posted here and debated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reducti...

kordless commented on Coinbase adds support for Litecoin   techcrunch.com/2017/05/03... · Posted by u/tmlee
pyabo · 9 years ago
Litecoin is now back because of Segwit. It's Bitcoin's hope to push a final acceptance of Segwit on Bitcoin. But, it doesn't have a real value in my opinion. About cryptocurrencies in general I can say that I use them to get payments and to pay employees and I find them very useful and the user experience is much better than normal banking (fast international transfers and complete tracking) and no need for KYC.
kordless · 9 years ago
I would modify that slightly and say Litecoin is back because of the Lightning Network, which benefits greatly from features provided by Segwit, and which itself leverages payment channels backed by multi-sig addresses. While Lightning can be enabled without Segwit, it's far more trustworthy with it, than without it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpfvhiqFw7A

u/kordless

KarmaCake day4030December 25, 2008
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