Interesting to see this on hacker news. Obviously illegal human trafficking is abhorrent, and I hope we learn more about the charges soon.
It's also interesting that he became an internet phenomenon after previous similar allegations, so I've always be apprehensive about him and people like him.
Just posting to agree, and in the real world I think most people do. I don't agree with the bill because this kind of heavy handed approach is just and escalation and doesn't solve anything. But it is an escalation, it's not like the bill has come out of nowhere, and I can understand why there would be immense public pressure to shield young kids from the ideological battle (and mostly trolling as I've said many times) that is going on.
I think objective sexual education is not only under attack by religious reservations anymore, there are also ideological elements.
Having two dads is not normal. It is ok and it is nobodies business to judge it. But there is a difference and it obviously does not align with biological realities.
So some people (not just the kids, they tend to not judge on these topics) need to accept realities that are not the usual case. Not being the the normal case is nothing intrinsically objectionable. But it is irrefutable that procreation between two men is not possible and it is not objectionable to teach that. On the contrary you would just obscure education like religious elements tried before.
> We all knew what boys and girls where until yesterday.
Something like 200 or less years ago boys were called girls until they went through puberty (or close to puberty) - speaking of puritanical England that is. Not sure about the rest of the world/continents.
They also wore dresses, typically blue I believe.
As always, the people butthurt and complaining know literally nothing about what they speak.
>> This is a deranged and nonsensical response. We all knew what boys and girls where until yesterday. Leave the kids alone.
> Something like 200 or less years ago boys were called girls until they went through puberty (or close to puberty) - speaking of puritanical England that is. Not sure about the rest of the world/continents.
The way you state that invites an anachronistic misunderstanding: it appears back then "girl" was a gender-neutral term for child:
> Nor have boys always even been called boys. Until the late 15th century the word ‘girl’ simply means a child of either sex. Boys, where they had to be differentiated, were referred to as ‘knave girls’ and girls in the female sense were called ‘gay girls’. Equally a boy could be a ‘knave child’ and a girl a ‘maiden child’.
> This is a deranged and nonsensical response. We all knew what boys and girls where until yesterday.
It is, in fact, a fundamental disagreement on this point (and a desire to impose one view on it by state power with the pretense of neutrality) that is (a major part of) the fundamental motivation for the bill.
It's more just an advancement on English really. Gendered terms aren't really useful. Especially with most written English being online now where no gender is known, it just becomes natural to use a non gendered term in all cases.
It is not compassion to lie to people and pretend they are what they are not.
Gender dysphoria is real, social contagion is real, and we shouldn't accept or embrace a self-destructive ideology that radically derails the lives of teenagers and younger.
Adults can behave however they want, but it should be considered child abuse to foster transgenderism and transsexuality in minors.
their first one quite good and thought provoking. The fact that this person had the gall to make a second one after all the talk in the first, the words sellout and hypocrite are not enough.
But you could easily do that with ESXi free running on your home desktop, running multiple VM's (lets say Windows, linux, BSD, etc etc) and then RDP from a mobile laptop to any of those VM's.
Not needing to run Windows 24/7 to support non-Windows work - one practical benefit is that you might not need to install as many security patches or they might install faster. Another reason might be to avoid running Windows entirely ;-)
Here's their statement[0], and this is the meat of it:
> F-Droid as a project soon celebrates its 9th birthday. In these 9 years, F-Droid’s mission was and is to create a place where people could download software they can trust – meaning only free, libre and open source software is available on its flagship repository. As a project, it tried to stay neutral all the time. But sometimes, staying neutral isn’t an option but instead will lead to the uprise of previously mentioned oppression and harassment against marginalized groups. We don’t want and won’t support that. F-Droid is taking a political stance here.
> F-Droid won’t tolerate oppression or harassment against marginalized groups. Because of this, it won’t package nor distribute apps that promote any of these things. This includes that it won’t distribute an app that promotes the usage of previously mentioned website, by either its branding, its pre-filled instance domain or any other direct promotion. This also means F-Droid won’t allow oppression or harassment to happen at its communication channels, including its forum. In the past week, we failed to fulfill this goal on the forum, and we want to apologize for that.
Basically - it became a go to for the Alt-Right, these guys ruin everything.
Sad thing about free speech on the internet is that while i'm largely in favour of it mostly it does create breeding grounds for openly hostile and harmful opinions/people.
Given the lack of education in most of the world this is sadly utterly terrifying and i have no idea what to do about it.
> this is sadly utterly terrifying and i have no idea what to do about it.
IMHO, accounts need to have non-trivial value, to all users. Social pressure will do much of the rest.
The problem with Gab, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, even HN and such is that accounts are free and do not meaningfully increase in value with time and activity. This allows bad actors to thwart social pressure by simply switching accounts at their leisure.
It also doesn't help that there _usually_ exists few barriers to access to online communities; people tend to have a romantic view of being open and welcoming, and social networks have an incentive to keep access generally open as it increases user retention.
Their stated rationale is that Gab serves disproportionately as a place to organize activities that reduce people's freedom, such as harassment campaigns against minority groups and anti-democratic activity like voter intimidation, and so they felt that hosting it was less in the spirit of freedom than banning it.
Ultimately, it's a problem that all pro-freedom platforms have to deal with: How much freedom should you give people to take away other people's freedom? When one group of people wants another to be less free, any action you take will result in a loss of freedom for someone.
> How much freedom should you give people to take away other people's freedom?
This is the very purpose of law according to John Locke who heavily influenced America's founders. To John Locke, the way to maximize freedom for everyone was by establishing laws which restrict people's ability to remove others' freedoms.
Having platforms like F-Droid self-govern and establish rules to try and maximize freedoms in the world is a pretty interesting experiment and a great showcase of small government, and thus should be widely supported by conservatives :)
> Having platforms like F-Droid self-govern and establish rules to try and maximize freedoms in the world is a pretty interesting experiment and a great showcase of small government, and thus should be widely supported by conservatives :)
Most modern day "conservatives" are not in fact conservatives. They dont seek a return to or a preservation of any traditional value at this point and instead seek radical change into a new and uncertain future. They have largely abandoned conservatism and replaced it with something entirely more terrifying.
F-Droid banned Gab for being a “free speech zone” that will “tolerate all opinions”.[0] Now Gab has been banned from Google Play Store, Apple App Store as well as from F-droid due to negative media pressure.
Speech control (Censorship) is used to remove 'independent thinking' as a state of mind.
The current view in US, Russia, UK, China, Canada, etc and most of other countries -- is that 'leadership', 'business leaders', and 'the scientists' -- know better.
Independent thinkers usually, not simultaneously fluent in economics, biology, geopolitics, financial services, etc. So when they question not just 'status quo' promoted by the 'leadership', but also the motives behind that -- they are labeled various bad names (eg. uneducated, backwards, etc..)
Gab exists for independents to share, develop, often change the position that one builds up questioning the authorities.
The authorities, of course, consider that a threat.
And so does F-Droid.
F-Droid, therefore is not for freedom. It is for complacency.
I am Jewish, was an atheist just a year ago, now studying Torah, Talmud, etc.
My background is mathematics (abstract algebra) and CS.
Not observant (yet) – as I writing this on Shabbat.
My family escaped dictatorship before, and now I am seeing it is being built up here -- different words, of course, but same action as was done by Mao, Stalin, Hitler (label, suppress, exterminate (or suffocate economically as in case in UK/US/Canada) )
I visit gab quite often (well ... a couple of times a week, for me that's often).
Most of the posts, just like on HN -- I do not find intellectually stimulating. A lot of repetition, etc -- but for me, they key is to know that people have freedom of communication and expression.
It is more important than if I agree with what they express.
I am also glad that Gab now have some politicians, and people who are running (in US politics) on there as well.
Doctors (with anti mRNA-mandate stance), like Robert Malone is there as well.
I also think that this un-reasonable boom in bitcoin valuation made a number of people rich enough -- to not go through the typical ladder of VC/financial services, high-paying jobs route.
Which means that we now have a number of millionaires who want to project their influence, their position on free speech -- who did not grow up in the 'status-quo' world.
This is also a positive outcome of BTC (even though I missed the boat on crypto!)
You only have "a right to [your] property" because the voting majority agreed that that right should exist.
Also, if democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner, what do you think would happen in that situation if the wolves abandoned voting?
Not so - property rights are a large part of human rights, inherent to being human.
Others may ignore your rights and abuse your freedoms, but that does not make it acceptable, and it doesn't mean those rights and freedoms don't exist.
The wolves and sheep are aggressors and prey. Your hypothetical is an analogy for theft - the majority 'taking' what it wants by disregarding the rights and freedoms of the minority.
> property rights are a large part of human rights
"Human rights" isn't an excuse to not pay taxes, nor do they even forbid progressive tax policies.
> Your hypothetical is an analogy for theft
(For the avoidance of doubt, I am against theft and in favour of democracy, so I agree that my hypothetical of the wolves abandoning democracy was not something I thought would lead to a better societal outcome.)
A society which accepts the principle of private property might agree that certain "taking" is theft, but a society can equally decide that the "taking" of tax payments is not theft. Just because a group is a minority and strongly opposes what the majority want, doesn't make the minority's desire inherently more moral than that of the majority, even if they express their desire in terms of "rights and freedoms".
There's a sound argument for levying broad taxes on services that are widely distributed, that you can't easily opt-out of, and that are reasonably beneficial and necessary.
Roads, police, fire fighters, border security, armed forces, environment regulators, etc. I'm certainly open to debating what does and does not fall into this category for fair and acceptable taxation.
But to argue that 'we are taxing your wealth because you have too much' obviously falls outside of that category.
How about "we are taxing your wealth because the money has to come from somewhere, and we can't take it from people who don't have any"? Given the diminishing marginal utility of income and wealth[0] it makes economic sense to tax the people who have a lot of wealth at a greater rate than those who have a little.
To try to fill in the blanks and steelman your position a little, I think that the most significant difference (and potential grounds for criticism) is that a wealth tax means the same money is taxed multiple times.
I'm not sure what essential philosophical or ethical objection there is to that, though, since money is constantly changing hands and being taxed (e.g. on the way in as income, and on the way out as consumption/sales tax). Moreover, as taxation changes incentives, it should be targeted to reduce socially negative actions, and arguably "wealth hoarding" is worse for society than "income", which is currently an accepted target for taxation.
I think the biggest "fairness" argument for a wealth tax, though, is that the average US household has a net worth of $120k, and pays $10k in total taxes per year, which is equivalent to an 8% wealth tax. (Of course it's true that if the household decided to not earn any money, it could greatly reduce its tax burden, but that's not really an option for most tax payers, whereas billionaires never have to work a day in their life).
So I would tie the wealth tax to be equivalent to the effective rate that the median household pays, but allow deductions for any other payments the wealthy person paid to the government or to charities. Also, for simplicity, the wealth tax should only apply to households above a certain wealth threshold, perhaps 10x or 100x of the median.
Would the USA be better off by taxing people like Elon based on some percentage of his wealth? Does that include only his cash holdings, or real estate, or vested stock, or options, or other non-liquid assets and investments?
Or is it better to let people like Elon do what he thinks is best with that capital?
Should we just let rich people make decisions for the rest of us, for the country? If you think so, you can vote for them in elections. But power comes from us, not from whoever strikes it rich.
It's not all or nothing, of course; Musk has plenty of resources regardless.
Who says otherwise? That is not the basis of taxation; the basis is we all have to chip in and make an equal sacrifice for the things we collectively decide. Musk has as much right to my money as I do to Musk's.
It would be very useful macro economically speaking to tax his liquid cash and demand deposit holdings because money can only be borrowed. If he keeps cash liquid beyond his need to transact with it then he's doing macroeconomic damage which has to be compensated through the central bank.
It's kinda like someone parking illegally and the police being unable to fine the driver. So instead they start bribing the driver so he stops parking illegally.
> Or is it better to let people like Elon do what he thinks is best with that capital?
If Elon wants to create a charitable foundation with the mission of "Make humans a multi-planetary species", with himself as the chief executive, then society would probably be happy to let him transfer his wealth into that foundation (tax free) and continue making decisions about how it is spent.
Elon didn't make his fortune in a vacuum. (Well, his rockets might operate in a vacuum, but you know what I mean.)
If someone succeeds in a country like America, it is because they have benefited from the roads and schools and legal system etc. that the government has put in place, paid for by taxation. If Elon is more wealthy than most people, it means he has benefited more from these services than them, and thus it is natural to expect him to pay more.
The question then becomes "How does society determine how much to bill Elon for?", and there are valid reasons to propose taxes based on income, or wealth, or consumption, or land, or some combination, or some alternative ways of generating revenue, such as only taxing corporate profit.
Ultimately these practical questions are for the people and their elected representatives to answer, but if the answer is "Money in your bank account is taxed, but money in your non-profit charity's account isn't", then Elon is welcome to jump through that hoop to reduce the money that goes to the government.
Changing the rules after the fact may work on current-Elon (what can he do?!) but will definitely discourage future-Elons. And the society will benefit much more from those future Elons than from fleecing the current one to appease non-productive "equality seekers".
How many potential future Elons would give up on their efforts to "benefit society" if, instead of being able to amass a net worth of $270 billion, they could only reach, say, $135 billion because of a wealth tax? It seems like you're saying there would be 50% as many future Elons if an Elon could only earn half as much, but maybe you have some other calculation in mind.
Anyway, plenty of other people manage to be motivated enough to benefit society without ever earning a single billion (and some people manage to earn or inherit billions without having a net positive contribution to society whatsoever).
> Or is it better to let people like Elon do what he thinks is best with that capital?
It's better to tax away a percentage of his wealth and collectively decide how to use it. Elon Musk shouldn't get a bigger say in how to run our society simply because he has the most money.
Isn't it just the first choice in the list? IntelliJ offers several vendors (Amazon, Azul, Bellsoft, Eclipse, IBM, Oracle, SAP), defaulting to Oracle JDK 17. But I assume you need an older version for Android development.
It's also interesting that he became an internet phenomenon after previous similar allegations, so I've always be apprehensive about him and people like him.