List of Companies who have suspended Twitter Ad’s:

General Mills
CVS
United Airlines
GM
Audi
Mazda
Porsche
Volkswagen
American Express
Coca-Cola
Johnson & Johnson
Levi Strauss
Spotify
Ford
Dyson
Forbes
DIRECTV
Nintendo
Unilever
PBS

— PoliticsVerse 🇺🇸 (@PoliticsVerse) November 5, 2022

Nintendo

@BeauBiden @Soren @SlackerNews discuss

this is who administrates your network

Orange site: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33481576

Alright, let's mention the elephant in the room.

Earlier this week, the article announcing the 1.65 release of the Rust programming language included this little aside:

Before going into the details of the new Rust release, we'd like to draw attention to the tragic death of Mahsa Amini and the death and violent suppression of many others, by the religious morality police of Iran. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahsa_Amini_protests for more details. We stand in solidarity with the people in Iran struggling for human rights.

This isn't the first time the first blog has mentioned world events. In the 1.59 release announcement, they said this:

Today's release falls on the day in which the world's attention is captured by the sudden invasion of Ukraine by Putin's forces. Before going into the details of the new Rust release, we'd like to state that we stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine and express our support for all people affected by this conflict.

And earlier, for the 1.44 release:

This is a shorter blog post than usual: in acknowledgement that taking a stand against the police brutality currently happening in the US and the world at large is more important than sharing tech knowledge, we decided to significantly scale back the amount of promotion we're doing for this release.

(There might have been others I missed.)

Each of these asides has been... controversial, to say the least. Many people are opposed to the use of a tech forum to broadcast political messages. And these asides have each been posted as-is, with no justification behind them and no hint that a justification is even necessary or wanted.

There's a clear disconnect in the community: for some people, these messages are so self-evident that they shouldn't even be considered political. For some people, they reflect a worldview that they don't necessarily agree with, and when they don't, still don't want to be pushed without their input in the name of a community they're participating in.

Also, let's stop mincing words for a second: a big part of the issue is that these messages are progressive, and reflect a progressive agenda. A lot of people in the Rust community aren't progressive, or not progressive of the specific US flavor that dominates western social media, and so feel extremely threatened when the Rust blog makes these political statements.

Anyway, it's a difficult subject to discuss with a cool head, and the community has retreaded arguments for and against ad nauseam. So I thought I'd write a short summary of the arguments that come up most often.

Are politics relevant in tech?

Some people don't want any political messaging at all.

They believe that Rust is a technical tool, and its release announcements shouldn't serve as a peanut gallery for ongoing civil unrest.

The main counter-argument is that technology is inherently political because tools such as machine learning can be used by governments or corporations in ways that are politically charged.

The counter-counter argument is that while some tech is directly political (eg face identification tech), in this specific instance, civil unrest in a single country has no obvious relation with a new compiler release of a general-purpose programming language.

Another argument I've see is that, even if Rust isn't usually political, human right issues are worth mentioning anyway because they are so important that they're worth crossing the usual boundaries of discussion.

Maybe it's worth making some people uncomfortable to signal-boost a message that people otherwise wouldn't hear because of their echo chamber.

The counter-argument to that is that issues mentioned on the blog have been high-profile and impossible to miss for anyone following mainstream US media. Arguably, the blog isn't so much signal-boosting "X happened" so much as signalling "we take this side on X".

(That last part has been a sore subject in tech circles lately, regarding the Black Lives Matter protests. A lot of sites have added banners supporting the movement. A common complaint was that these banners made the site's UX worse, not to help the user of the site, but to signal to everyone that the site owners were on the good political side.)

The choice of subject

The three subjects that have been deemed worth a mention so far definitely feel partisan.

The asides are US-centric, focus on subjects of interest in the US discourse and are US-sided and progressive.

The blog has had an aside on the death of Mahsa Amini in Iran, but not on the brutal murder of Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi by US ally Saudi Arabia. More recently, the blog had nothing to say about the political persecution and extradition of Julian Assange to the US. The blog hasn't mentioned the criminal murder of Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeli military.

Yes, the issues the blog mentioned were real human rights issues, but selective coverage of human rights is propaganda. It serves a specific, US-centric agenda. To people who don't agree with that agenda, it can feel like they're receiving propaganda they didn't ask for, that they don't agree with, and that they're still being made to give a platform to by participating in the Rust community.

Also, it deserves to be said, but sometimes people are wrong? Sometimes the message being boosted will not be consensual.

Imagine if the Rust team had, in 2002, broadcast a message saying "We stand with the US intervention in Irak to remove the weapons of mass destruction owned by the regime"? Or in 2020, "We stand with the peaceful protesters fighting for democracy in Washington DC, and we strongly believe that all accusations of election fraud should be taken seriously and investigated"?

It's not obvious what process the Release Team is using to decide whether an issue is partisan or consensual enough to be signal-boosted.

My own take

That being said, it can be argued that some imperfect human rights coverage is better than no coverage at all.

As I said above, maybe human rights are important enough that we should talk about them even when it's not quite convenient or polite.

Here we get into my personal opinion: some things are right and some things are wrong, and if your mind is clear enough, it's possible to tell them apart regardless of your ideology.

Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and the tens of thousands of deaths that followed were wrong. Assange's imprisonment on bogus charges, and his sham extradition trial are wrong.

Sometimes things are wrong enough it's worth spending the time to hammer them in, even if that creates controversy and hurt feelings.

But there has to be a process. If you really want to push human rights, and not just a watered-down version of the US progressive agenda, you need to have some way of selecting worthy causes that isn't just whatever was last on mainstream channels. You need a set of criteria for what is and isn't worth mentioning. These should be documented, and ideally be something other than "Whenever the release team feels like it."

Tech doesn't have to be political. A compiler can just be a compiler. But if you're going to do politics, the least you can do is not half-butt it.

https://poignardazur.github.io/2022/11/05/political-messages-in-the-rust-blog/

Birdwatch is a collaborative way to add helpful context to Tweets and keep people better informed

Birdwatch is a pilot program that aims to create a better-informed world. It empowers people on Twitter to collaboratively add helpful notes to Tweets that might be misleading.

• Contributors write and rate notes

Contributors are people on Twitter, just like you, who chose to enroll in the pilot to write and rate notes. The more people that participate, the better the program becomes. Learn more about how Birdwatch works.

• Only notes that people find helpful appear on a Tweet

Birdwatch doesn't work by majority rules. To identify notes that are helpful to a wide range of people, Birdwatch ratings requires agreement between contributors who have sometimes disagreed in their past ratings. This helps prevent one-sided ratings. Learn more about how Birdwatch identifies helpful notes.

• Twitter doesn't choose what shows up, the people do

Twitter doesn't write, rate or moderate notes (unless they break the Twitter rules.) We believe giving people a voice to make these choices together is a fair and effective way to add information that helps people stay better informed.

https://twitter.github.io/birdwatch/#

Here's the onion link : http://bookszlibb74ugqojhzhg2a63w5i2atv5bqarulgczawnbmsb6s6qead.onion/

Remember, piracy is morally and ethically okay.

Mild sneed in /r/Piracy : https://old.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/yll45h/zlibraryorg_is_fricking_gone_and_we_can_only_blame/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/ylrbjq/zibraryorg_will_always_be_there_use_this_guide/?sort=controversial

https://cantsayanything.win/2022-10-transparent-moderation/?talk

Orange Site:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33475391

https://old.reddit.com/r/CantSayAnything/

http://antirez.com/news/138

Orange Site:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33473497

https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ym7fzz/in_defense_of_linked_lists/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/comments/ym7rs8/a_node_pointing_to_null_is_a_metaphor_of/

https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1588603683570601985#m

I've just spoken to a Twitter employee who works on climate, and they said their unit was simply cut off without warning. https://t.co/hig7DoDEG0

— Dave Vetter (@davidrvetter) November 4, 2022

Every time I see someone who's been laid off they're always working in an even more ridiculous department than the last one.

I wonder if every tech company is like this now or if Twitter is especially bad?

Orange Site:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33467652

Discuss

Orange Site:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33458563

Edit: https://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/z-library-domains-are-seized-and-pirate-book-site-is-dead

https://torrentfreak.com/tiktok-blocks-z-library-hashtag-pending-piracy-investigation-221031/

It's still available on Tor

http://bookszlibb74ugqojhzhg2a63w5i2atv5bqarulgczawnbmsb6s6qead.onion/

Orange Site:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33460970

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32972923

https://old.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/yll45h/zlibraryorg_is_fricking_gone_and_we_can_only_blame/?sort=controversial

(It's the TikTok s fault)

https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/yln9aj/zlibraryorg_is_fricking_gone_and_we_can_only_blame/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/zlibrary/comments/ylmkt1/alternatives/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/ylmjz1/tiktok_blocks_zlibrary_hashtag_pending_piracy/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/zlibrary/comments/ylmkqq/a_workaround_yall_tor_browser_works_click_send_to/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/zlibrary/comments/ylma04/how_to_get_access_to_z_lib_again/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/zlibrary/comments/ylko3f/is_zlibrary_down/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/zlibrary/comments/ylkc8m/z_library_pooping_down/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/zlibrary/comments/yljn16/oh_god_what_now/?sort=controversial

https://twitter.com/search?q=zlibrary%20down&src=typeahead_click&f=top

Imagine coming to an X.org developer conference and seeing this shit, and this random heckin valid grill in a cloak for some reason

It's apparently an "English V-Tuber", and this shit is making me want to gouge my ears out.

I'm not dissing the good work here, but jesus fricking christ, this has got to be the most obnoxious thing I've ever listened to

They apparently live in Tokyo as their Twitter says but they don't speak a single bit of English and they don't seem to have an accent

also

It's going to be unveiled here in three hours:

Which company’s is next too do layoffs? Discuss.

^{Trans lives matter}

Affirmative action in American college admissions may be about to end. On October 31st the Supreme Court heard two cases in which lawyers argued that the current practice---which allows universities to favour applicants of some races over others---violates civil-rights laws and the constitution. Judging by the sceptical questioning of the conservative justices, who thanks to Donald Trump now command a majority, the question is not whether such preferences will be restricted, but whether they will survive at all.

For more than 40 years the court has allowed some positive discrimination. But it has done so with discomfort. Too-obvious tactics like racial quotas, or awarding points for skin colour, were ruled excessive. The compromise was to consider race as one part of "holistic admissions" in a way that made its weight hard to discern. In 2003 Justice Sandra Day O'Connor declared the practice ought to be time-limited, expecting it to be unnecessary 25 years from then. If the court rules as expected in June 2023, five years ahead of Ms O'Connor's schedule, there will be some sorrow, but hardly the same backlash as met the overturning of the right to abortion set in Roe v Wade. Surveys show that majorities of African-Americans, Californians, Democrats and Latinx all oppose the use of race in college admissions (and in other areas). The demise of this unpopular scheme will offer a chance to build something better.

A diversity of backgrounds in elite institutions is a desirable goal. In pursuing it, though, how much violence should be done to other liberal principles---fairness, meritocracy, the treatment of people as individuals and not avatars for their group identities? At present, the size of racial preferences is large and hard to defend. The child of two college-educated Nigerian immigrants probably has more advantages in life than the child of an Asian taxi driver or a white child born into Appalachian poverty. Such backgrounds all add to diversity. But, under the current regime, the first is heavily more favoured than the others.

Racial preferences are not, however, the most galling thing about the ultra-selective universities that anoint America's elite. The legal case against Harvard, one of the universities defending itself before the Supreme Court, has prised open its admissions records to show the scale of unjustified advantage showered upon the already privileged---disproportionately those who are white and wealthy. A startling 43% of white students admitted to Harvard enjoy some kind of non-academic admissions preference: being an athlete, the child of an alumnus, or a member of the dean's list of special applicants (such as the offspring of powerful people or big donors).

A cynic could argue that racial balancing works as a virtue-signalling veneer atop a grotesquely unfair system. A study published in 2017 found that most of Harvard's undergraduates hailed from families in the top 10% of the income distribution. Princeton had more students from the top 1% than the bottom 60%. When this is the case, it seems unfair that it is often minority students---not the trust-funders---who have their credentials questioned. University presidents and administrators who preen about all their diverse classes might look at how Britain---a country of kings, queens, knights and lords---has fostered a university system that is less riven with ancestral privilege.

Unfairness in American education will not be fixed by one court ruling. But it will shock a system in need of reform. Legacy admissions should be ended. Colleges claiming that alumni donations would wither without them should look to Caltech, mit and Johns Hopkins---top-notch institutions that ditched the practice and, as The Economist went to press, still seemed reputable and solvent. Blunt racial preferences will probably need to be replaced in response to the Supreme Court. But a less socially divisive system based on income could take their place. That would do a better job of taking actual disadvantage into account. It would still favour non-white and non-Asian Americans, because they are more likely to be poorer, but would do so using a racially neutral method.

In some ways, the question of who gets into a handful of elite universities is a distraction from the deeper causes of social immobility in America. Schooling in poorer neighbourhoods was dismal even before covid-19. The long school closures demanded by teachers' unions wiped out two decades of progress in test scores for nine-year-olds, with hard-up, black and Latinx children worst affected. Efforts to help the needy should start before birth and be sustained throughout childhood. Nothing the Supreme Court says about the consideration of race in college admissions will affect the more basic problem, that too few Americans from poorer families are sufficiently well-nurtured or well-taught to be ready to apply to college. However the court rules, that is a debate America needs to have.■

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/11/02/american-society-is-so-focused-on-race-that-it-is-blind-to-class

Orange Site:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33446064

discuss

Windows 11 really is the new Windows Vista

https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ykeckh/windows_11_runs_on_fewer_than_1_in_6_pcs/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/tech/comments/ykqf28/windows_11_runs_on_fewer_than_1_in_6_pcs/?sort=controversial

Orange Site:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33438877

@WindowsShill @EdgeShill @BeauBiden @Soren @BraveShill @garlicdoors @jannies @NoUntakenNames01 @schizo @dont_log_me_out @justcool393 @grizzly @DrTransmisia @nekobit @Maximus @Basedal-Assad @AraAra @getogeto @duck discuss

Tiktokcide when?

Orange Site:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33447285

https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ykts5h/tiktok_is_unacceptable_security_risk_and_should/?sort=controversial

Yes, @Not_Chris_Deliah know @Not_Chris_Deliah am typing on my PC (@jannies) but that's only because @Not_Chris_Deliah is updating my Macbook right now.

Trans lives matter...

We’re currently hard at work to make Twitter better for everyone, including developers! We’ve decided to cancel the #Chirp developer conference while we build some things that we’re excited to share with you soon.

— Twitter Dev (@TwitterDev) November 2, 2022