I was parked at Selzer beach in Seaside, Oregon when the earthquake/tsunami news hit around 7:30pm. Within 30 minutes it was impossible to buy gas without queueing and now there is a pretty steady stream of cars heading out of town. As of 9pm it’s been upgraded to a warning up and down the coast.
I was just thinking of tsunamis the two days ago in the Del Rey beach parking lot, where I noticed the locals seemed to park at the exit end of the lot, facing out. I moved my car to match because that just makes sense.
I’ve never thought about a tsunami when visiting the beach in my life. Are they much more common in the Pacific? We go to the Gulf and Atlantic and it’s never something I think about. We usually go in June/July, so we don’t worry much about hurricanes either.
There is no Atlantic ring of fire, is there. What little places like Iceland show is nothing compared to what pacific has to offer in much larger area.
While the Atlantic doesn't really have many faults that will generate earthquakes causing tsunamis there is always a risk of landslides creating large tsunamis up to what we'd consider mega-tsunamis. This said this is something that may have thousands of years between incidents.
This piece seems ignorant of regular people's realities. Many people cannot afford the luxuries of this elusive fancy "safe" bike with well-engineered parts, kept on a professional maintenance schedule. I suspect this really isn't an issue for most HN readers, and the fear-mongering just heats simmering angst. Remember a cure for angst is to 1) ride your bike and 2) donate time and resources your local bike repair cooperative or homeless shelter.
Author seems to forget the most important part of the machinery is the rider. What a glorious machine! He also seems to forget that millions of people in the world are riding bikes, motorbikes, and cars scrapped together from whatever they can afford or find. Forced to accept the risk, they usually get where they're going. I wonder does the author check out the maintenance of every Uber he hops into? "Let me see your torque wrench!?"
I've built and maintained all my own bikes since around 2005 with no training. It doesn't take a genius or a torque wrench to keep a bike rolling. I recently dropped my standards quite a bit on two bikes: One where I took a decent 2021 FS trail MTB I'd maybe ridden ten times on a black diamond downhill singletrack and another where I took a 1998 HT MTB with seized shifters, no grips, crusty, barely-functioning brakes and a sun-baked Hellraiser-looking rear tire held together only by a thin sheet of kevlar(?) around the streets of Portland, Oregon for three weeks wearing no helmet. I know, I'm a monster.
As an aside, I ride a 2005 Yamaha YZ250 (dirt motorcycle) my ex maintains... that feels sorta... dangerous.
I think the key is most people are ignorant. If people knew how to maintain such a simple thing as a bicycle, they would maintain them correctly.
Cost is mostly a non issue for most people. It doesn't cost a lot to maintain a non high end bicycle if you do it yourself. If you look at the shimano groupsets on the lowest end of the spectrum like shimano tourney, you quickly realize they need much less bicycle specific tooling as the high end ones. For example instead of socket bolts they are using hex head bolts that can be torqued with simple wrenchs or a single adjustable one. The 2 only specific tools are the threaded cassette tool and the square taper bottom bracket extractor. Everything else can be done with a very basic set of tool and there is nothing super challenging.
"The infection does not seem to be widespread, which could mean that the backdoored plugin was only available for a very short period of time and only delivered to a small number of users."
Last night, only hours before he died, I chose to watch Thelma and Louise. I was really struck by his character this time around, particularly in the diner and motel scenes. He absolutely nailed a male archetype I’m familiar with as a woman: the un-self-aware douche, and he managed it with Susan Sarandon staring at him. Chef's kiss and RIP you gorgeous thing.
If you've decided you don't want any (more) kids in the future, a vasectomy is the easiest way to insure that with the least likely side effects for anyone.
Why would you force your wife to be subjected to the side effects of birth control if you can get a simple out-patient procedure?
Because why would you do something essentially irreversible when the other party has a temporary solution. I’ve changed my mind about things plenty of times, why would I do something I regret 20 years from now.
Because you don’t want to give yourself the chance to change your mind.
It’s worth nothing that hormonal birth control doesn’t really agree with all women. Hormones have health complications, including mental health. I would never push a partner towards taking them.
Well yeah if you don't know yourself well enough to know that you never want kids in the future, you obviously wouldn't get an irreversible procedure.
But everyone has a point after which they decide they don't want more kids and it's insane to force your partner to continue being responsible for that with all the downsides when you can just get a snip.
And if you're thinking you're gonna want kids 20 years from now as a man in his 30s or 40s or later, run that by your partner and see what she thinks about that.
Oh I don't know. Go read a single article about women's birth control and the extreme effects it has in a woman's body and often personality? Also, self empowerment? Also, casual sex and condom use is notoriously not perfect. Curing many STDs is easier than, again, the larger burden that women carry when contraception fails.
Women this and women that. I’m not going to have surgery and close off a bodily function permanently and irreversibly (essentially) when the woman can just stop birth control whenever she wants. Not to mention extreme responses happen in a small fraction of women. Around 30% have mild reactions and around 4.5% have extreme reactions.
Ah, I see, this isn't actually a remote concern to you, for obvious reasons.
> I’m not going to have surgery and close off a bodily function permanently and irreversibly (essentially)
Oh, dear, could you be more ignorant?
> In addition, nearly eight out of ten women who used contraception said they had experienced two or more side effects.
literally first result
> Overall, one quarter of females who are using contraception are not using their preferred method. The leading reason for this is concern about side effects, a theme that comes up in many aspects of contraceptive care. Almost one-third of contraceptive users (31%) say they are experiencing side effects from their current method, and just over half (52%) say the side effects are more severe than they expected.
literally second result
> In the KFF survey, about a third of women using contraception said they currently experienced side effects such as weight gain, headaches, bloating, nausea, mood changes, and menstrual changes. While these issues are usually not severe enough to be medically concerning, they can have a significant impact on quality of life. Studies show that many women who stop using birth control do so because of side effects.
Are there actually any women in this conversation? I find many of the comments at YC to be obnoxiously male dominant and condescending, this comment section included. It's been frustrating me for quite a while now.
Would guess only 5.3% of YC readers are female. And would say, it's posh, not "real world," and it's not comfortable even though I'm a very strong woman - and a welder.
The comments you're complaining about appear to be men describing, from their own experiences as men, what it's like to be a man.
If you're going to imply that one needs to be a woman to understand the female perspective on these social encounters, you could at least be consistent and fair about it. As much as you might tire of seeing discussions like the current one, I tire of the insinuation - across so many discussions I've found myself stuck in across the Internet - that women have some special insight into womanhood, and also some special insight into manhood.
Just as I tire of being urged to have empathy for people unlike myself, then shouted at when my empathy leads me to the "wrong" conclusions, or told that actually having such empathy is impossible on account of my whatever immutable characteristics.
> Are there actually any women in this conversation?
I think the average demographic here is the standard software engineering team in the US, unfortunately. I hope I'm wrong. There are some high profile HN'ers that are women (e.g. DoreenMichele comes to mind).
Fun fact: in eastern Europe (and Russia too?) the gender dynamics of software engineering are much more gender equal compared to the US/EU. Probably other STEM disciplines as well. I'm not sure about welding though.
I'm getting a bit side tracked with my thoughts, it's just that I think it ties into bigger issues.
I remember once being in a feminism class, as the only male, making a case for getting women into stem and it fell on deaf ears. I think that's also in part because women (and men for that matter) that take feminism classes tend to skew liberal artsy. I just happen to have a liberal artsy side and a STEM side (and a cool feminism teacher that was patient enough for all my naive questions so I felt emotionally safe to take her class).
I wish there were more women in the conversation but unfortunately there aren't. The last company I worked for happened to have an equal 50/50 gender split. That was cool. It confirmed what I thought about men and women: ignore gender and focus on personality and their thoughts. I've often been in situations where any form of stereotypes have been thrown out of the window and my last employer was one of them. It's beautiful.
Unfortunately, HN seems to be too big for that. The culture needs to shift and I don't have much of a clue how. I think in part it's with how women versus men are socialized here. Boys that are socially excluded tend to go towards computers. Girls don't really seem to be socially excluded that often compared to boys? Just brainstorming, I might be totally off.
> Are there actually any women in this conversation? I find many of the comments at YC to be obnoxiously male dominant and condescending, this comment section included. It's been frustrating me for quite a while now.
I'm curious how you find them frustrating. When I was reading them, I wasn't quite sure what to think about it.
By the way, I've used a throwaway because of my submission to HN, not because of this comment. I thought I was on my pseudonym account. I have autism (diagnosed in my mid thirties) and I think many people here are on the spectrum, which is what my submission is about.
> I think in part it's with how women versus men are socialized here.
Indeed. Women are socialized to seek men of higher status as a partner. Thus men feel the need to seek higher status to become an attractive mate. And so men "infiltrate" any position that offers a chance at higher status (at least where high pay stands in as a proxy). Likewise, men are socialized to seek women with beauty rather than status, so there is little imperative for women to seek professions of status, but do benefit from careers that will preserve their beauty – so something like welding in a harsh environment that is hard on one's health is not a top choice.
That said, the social norms do seem to be changing. It appears the younger generations aren't coupling up so much anymore, and if that trend continues attracting a mate may no longer be a consideration.
People are in fact animals, and women do in fact search for high-status mates across all nations and continents. This is not the result of socialization but biology, and if a man wants to get married and have kids, he needs to provide as a rule of human nature. And if his current nation and government aren't aiding him in doing that, you can bet he's going to be mad. Get over it.
The point of socialization is to deny biology, which tells you that you ought to murder and steal and rape so that your offspring can succeed. You can be mad about it all you want but I most certainly will not get over it.
They aren't having offspring. Cooperation with people that hate you does not result in offspring. If the system makes it impossible for the average man to start a family, expect chaos.
I'm female and I've been here, on and off, since Hacker News was founded. (I burn accounts every so often so I don't get attached to them.)
I participate for a few reasons:
1.) I'm a 3rd generation techie and that's a fairly rare perspective, particularly for people of my age group (I'm 36). HN is one of the few places online that can appreciate that nuance and why it might matter. Related to this, I'm a woman who can in no way be considered an interloper or someone who doesn't understand the culture or the professions. I'm basically here to offer the perspective that the average HN user might hear from his daughter in 10-30 years when I opine on gender stuff.
2.) It's one of the few places with a decent age spread amongst users. Too many other sites are dominated by people under the age of 30 (to be generous).
3.) It's text based and amenable to long format textual discussions, which are how I prefer to interact online since I joined the WWW in 1993 and grew up with the text based Web.
4.) It's somewhere online where a good chunk of the userbase is more technologically proficient than I am and I like talking to people who know more than me about esoteric subjects.
It's totally okay if you don't want to go into a nuanced discussion. I guess I'm just bored and curious. Overall, I find your comment interesting.
> a tech bro website like hacker news
HN doesn't feel like that to me. Whenever I'm here, I have my brainstorm and science hat on. Nothing more, nothing less. To call HN a tech bro site, it seems to be a bit of an attack and not conductive towards the discussion. I guess the definition of tech bro differs. Also, being a male that doesn't care too much about its own gender, I am probably "well-suited" to not care.
In my case, I draw the line if they're also into sports (like going to a soccer match or something). Probably others don't. But that's why I have a bit of an issue with words like "tech bros". Like, do tech bros even lift? Most don't seem to. The characterization is too vague.
> Women do not get paid to be condescended towards
That makes sense, and I can imagine how it is experienced as such. It's sad to see.
I remember being on a subreddit once and experiencing it the other way (r/womenover30 or something). When I said something I was downvoted. If a woman said the same thing, she wasn't. I can imagine some women feel that a bit here. Perhaps a lot, but my imagination fails there. I get that it sucks.
> This community is obnoxiously male and condescending, to put it mildly.
What does it mean to be obnoxiously male? I've seen so many different ideas on what it means to be male that I honestly stopped giving a shit about what people mean. It's too confusing, despite me being a hetero cis white male.
I guess it's the autism. Whenever it comes to gender (masculinity and femininity) I mostly see rhetorical nonsense (e.g. some people saying that being emotional sensitive is a feminine quality. It is most likely true that more women are like that, but I just find that whole frame of thinking toxic as the word "femininity" almost implies it's inherent, which I think is highly debatable - I can go on like that for a while, also about masculinity). Could you be a bit more factual so I can make my own conclusions?
I mean, I've been to a feminism class and while that was really useful, I still think the typology is silly.
---
That it is seen as condenscending, that depends. With regards to condescending on women in this thread, I see that. I've also seen it to some extent in other threads. But condescending in general? No. I'm not sure if that's what you mean, but you write a little hand wavy at times. I mean, the points you make still stand, but I think they'd stand better without the labeling things so strongly that are clearly a strong interpretation that I don't understand how you get to it.
I do get the general vibe of the average Hacker News person when the subject is about dating. Comments tend to steer towards hopelessness, and that particular way of being I found is strongly correlated with being out of touch with how women look at certain things. I get the sense when women write something the average HN commenter has an issue to not look past their own trauma in order to listen to what women are saying. In that sense, I can see it's off putting.
I really believe that you are approaching this in good faith, so I will do the same. I don't have time to really dig into this deeply with you so these brief justifications of my stance will have to suffice. I don't understand some of your tangents, and you will have to forgive me for not addressing the reddit or sports stuff.
> Re: tech bro
The tech bro thing comes across most apparently in the pro-VC slant of this site (inextricable, I know). There is a high proportion of believers in a fantasy meritocracy where current wealth concentration is justifiable due to the sheer genius of "founders". This is very much a tech-bro way of thinking.
The way HN regularly reduces socio-political problems into a technological gap is another tech-bro "thing". When someone suggests that a country switch its currency to crypto to eliminate state corruption, or suggests that biometrics scanners be installed at ports of entry to eliminate slavery and humans rights abuses, that is a tech-bro opinion. It is different from a blue collar environment because the people on this website are extremely insulated from the social issues that come up on here. Nonetheless, they feel like they have an obvious solution to a version of the problem that they've concocted in their head based on a 2 second glance at a headline. It reminds me of this Adam Savage video that I think is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP4CKn86qGY
> Re: obnoxiously male
This is exemplified by the high confidence and combativeness in this and other similar comment sections on HN, but let's just talk about this comment section.
Commenters here are confidently asserting that the author's lived experience is wrong because of a certain interpretation of the words that they typed in the article. When she says that someone made comments that made her feel othered, the reaction here is to disbelieve and downplay. That is very much a "obnoxiously male" way of approaching things. In more balanced spaces, the presumption would be that this blog post was made for a reason and that the person who made it is valid and rational by default. Nobody here has any additional information, and they are asserting that their interpretation of her words is correct even though they are heavily influenced by their own biases of gender, class, and otherwise.
> I really believe that you are approaching this in good faith
Statements like this are a false courtesy. They imply that you have a reason to believe otherwise. Despite the stereotypes of social ineptitude, "hacker" types are often keenly aware of such things.
> There is a high proportion of believers in a fantasy meritocracy where current wealth concentration is justifiable due to the sheer genius of "founders".
As usual, the appropriate response to claims that generalize "what HN thinks" is to flag them. Also, the point is that "tech bro" is used as an insulting epithet, specifically to bring in the stereotypes you describe here, and doesn't make an actual point.
But so that it's clear: this line of complaint fails to engage with what others are actually saying. Putting aside the fact that nobody else ITT is talking about socioeconomics, "meritocracy" is not an article of faith, but rather a moral value. It belongs entirely to the category of "ought" rather than "is", so it's fallacious, and a category error, to critique others for "believing in" it.
> ... asserting that the author's lived experience is wrong because of a certain interpretation of the words... the reaction here is to disbelieve and downplay
First: This is the same category error in the opposite direction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem): "lived experience" cannot be "right" or "wrong", but rather a claim (of having experienced something) can be true or false. The phrasing "lived experience" is generally used to take for granted, and deny any opportunity to question, the simple veracity of a story.
Second: ... but no, in point of fact, nobody here is actually claiming the story to be untrue (including any specific claim about her resulting emotional state) - there is no "disbelief". Instead, the assertion is that the author's stated reaction to events was not reasonable given her description. That is a moral judgment, but it's not based on any "certain interpretation" beyond the most obvious one.
> That is very much a "obnoxiously male" way of approaching things
The entire point of many of these comments is that they are very explicitly attempting to hold women to the same standards of conduct as men, and explicitly removing gender from the assessment. Ascribing phrases like "obnoxiously male" to points of view that disagree with your own, is obviously not helping matters.
If you need more evidence that people responding this way are not in any way motivated by gender, please consider your own username. Many people have disagreed with you (or disagreed with others presenting arguments like yours, or made statements contrary to the view you describe here) ITT; I strongly doubt any of them processed the thought "ah, 'bradjohnson' must be a woman". If you need more evidence that having such opinions is not in any way caused by gender, consider the fact that you don't hold them yourself. If you want to attribute the opinions that disagree with you to masculinity anyway, I can't stop you, but I see no reason whatsoever to be convinced.
> In more balanced spaces, the presumption would be that this blog post was made for a reason and that the person who made it is valid and rational by default
That is the assumption here, too. However, default presumptions can be overturned by evidence.
> and they are asserting that their interpretation of her words is correct even though they are heavily influenced by their own biases
If a woman says "a man said X", it means that a man said X. The fact that a woman said it, doesn't change the meaning. If a man responds "saying X isn't a bad thing", that doesn't involve any "interpretation of her words". It's simply an assessment of the event described, based on the description. Words mean things.
By the way, bringing up class biases rings completely hollow. You are complaining about (and stereotyping) the conduct of men on HN, while the article discussed welders - a completely different social class.
I do. This is a crushing blow, and I'm feeling scared. I have plugins in the repository, and thousands of paying customers who have upgraded said plugins, and things just feel... unstable. That's not to mention the many, many websites I've built for clients who, should they catch wind of this bad WP mojo, will want at least an explanation. And I can't explain it, because it's insanity.
As someone who spends time in Eastern and rural California, I can totally see 'em taking up arms! A lot of Californians are already in militias. There are plenty of roiling pockets elsewhere outside these red counties, too. Don't get too comfortable with assumptions about "blue" states.
I've spent two weeks combined solo off trail just wandering Death Valley, and will say I could have gone much longer. There's a lot more water back there than people realize, and parts of the year are colder than they are hot. HOWEVER, as a close friend of a friend of the superintendent and someone privy to SAR details, I'm telling ya, even on trail (on road) it's just not a safe place for most people once it's over 95° or so. Forget 110°! Many people suck at decision-making, and even more so once warm and suffering electrolyte imbalances. The Germans were some of _many_ to perish in Deva.
Vanagon owners already have a network app (VanAlert) that's free (donation encouraged). We use one another's driveways and tools, and watch out for stolen vans. That feels like "community." This venture feels entirely like something else, like someone trying to make cash off a different type of van/RV dweller. Cringe Not sure I'd partipate, even if I do have property near two national parks!
