“It’s an intriguing result, and it may lend some weight to the MOND hypothesis for further study. But it’s important to keep in mind that so far the bulk of the evidence still points towards dark matter, and it’ll take much more work to topple that hypothesis entirely.“
The so-called by many, Father of Capitalism, Adam Smith, only defined market in terms of a free labor market.
He also wrote that whatever type of government existed in a nation, it would likely need to enforce equality of condition to avoid what we’d call monopoly of labors agency.
He was openly hostile to extreme division of labor, paraphrasing, it would turn humans into the dumbest creatures to ever exist.
Look at that. Hundreds of years ago humans realized exactly what humans are capable of emotionally and warned against it.
Reminds of me of the ancient Greeks who, again paraphrasing, wrote they hope the rubes do not some day realize there are no gods atop Olympus. Just men on thrones manipulating their fears.
Anecdotally, since I got away from Ruby, working on software became way more productive and tolerable.
Maybe it was something with the corner of the Ruby world I fell into, but the syntax sugar options and “cleverness” that enabled was maddening to deal with, and permeated that crowd.
Code bases with mixed styles are a thing in any language, but the Ruby-ists around me found a way to make one project look like half a dozen languages were involved.
Interesting, I'd say the opposite. In a Rails app that was written consistently with the styles and APIs documented in the Rails docs I have never been more productive. In other micro-framework type environments, regardless of the language, Ruby/Sinatra, Python/Flask, Javascript/Express. Most codebases I've encountered are a mess of inconsistencies introduced by various developers over the years. With a lot of the mess, effectively re-writing the core features of Rails and it's most popular gems.
Rails, if done correctly, is a remarkable tool to allow developers to focus on the business logic and UI of their app and forget about the "filler features" that pretty much every app needs implemented. On the other hand if you write Rails code without reading the docs and re-invent the wheel rather than doing things the Rails way, essentially running an app in the framework without using the framework methods, you can create yourself a monstrous unmaintainable codebase like no other.
You're correct, Rails is not Ruby. But in my experience 80%+ of the Ruby ecosystem is Rails. But now I'm even more curious what problems you encountered with Ruby because I find it to be an excellent scripting language, especially if performance is not a major concern.
To be fair, it’s probably not Ruby, but the clever linguists I was working with 2008-2012 era.
Everyone brought their preferred syntax and there was much less of a “let’s solve the problem, not be clever” sentiment back then.
That said, Python almost makes such things impossible. Decorator patterns are the only thing I can think of in Python that ever made me really think.
6 to one, half dozen to another. How we start out thinking about problems has an impact on what syntax works for us best later on. I’m in my 40s and started in electronics, designing boards that shipped in Nortel kit.
I started with C and little else, not digging into OOP until hardware work went overseas. Perhaps my brain is over specialized to prefer a particular way of visualizing code I need to write.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Rails is great if out of the box with devise + active admin it gets you at least 80% of the way to what you're trying to build. Once you start writing loads of background jobs and business logic it becomes a quagmire pretty quick. I've seen this happen over and over again on projects I've worked on.
I mention Rails specifically because I can't think of any other reason I'd use Ruby these days.
> Anecdotally, since I got away from Ruby, working on software became way more productive and tolerable.
Oddly enough I found myself becoming less productive when I tried Elixir and Phoenix for a bit (compared to Ruby).
You could look at code written by 10 people and end up with 10 drastically different looking code bases. Not just the organization of files but the logic behind the functions. It makes it very hard to read other people's code unless you know every pattern they use very well.
Here's an example of that where I wrote something one day, asked if there's a better way to do it and someone else wrote their own version[0]. Take a look at the 2nd code snippet vs the 3rd. The first code snippet happens to be Python btw. Even after a year of casually working with Elixir I can't understand the 3rd snippet of code at a glance. When I first tried to parse it mentally I spent literally an hour picking it apart just to see what everything did and I forgot almost all of it a week later.
I also found myself much less productive mainly because the language tends to be quite verbose compared to Ruby, especially when you compare things like ActiveRecord vs Ecto. Ecto is one of those tools where it sounds unbelievably good on paper with great abstraction ideas but in practice it's pretty complicated because there's tons of different syntactical ways to do the same thing, the docs aren't inconsistent and every blog post you read has people implementing things in a different way. Then you combine that with it being fairly low level and you end up having to write huge amounts of very tricky code to do the equivalent of what you can do in AR.
At least with Rails, most projects look the same and unless someone dives off the deep end with meta programming, you can generally follow the code. I guess this is a testament to how good Rails is when it comes to developing its APIs. You can go such a long ways and develop fully featured apps based on Rails without really having to do anything crazy.
I've done Rails full time for around six years on two different teams. A big chunk of that time involved working on a codebase whose size rivaled some of the largest in the world.
Rubocop (with some tweaked rules; it's IMO too restrictive out of the box) was a big lifesaver in terms of steering both teams toward a common, readable coding style and mostly eliminating debates over style at PR review time.
I agree 100%. Ruby is my favorite language but for anything that isn't purely a solo project I've moved to harder-to-misuse tools for exactly this reason.
I think the OP is being metaphorical by saying this hack is like doing that to someone. In this case the big “wealth event” is SolarWinds getting distributed to many high profile government agencies.
The idea is to keep a portfolio of stolen identities and sell them off. There’s plenty of ways to cash in early if you’re willing to take a bit less money upfront.
The problem is meritocracy can be gamed to be unfair by selling the perception of improved performance.
Giving off a perception of peak performance is trivial for those that know how to shmooze, get that title bump.
We see it all the time with celebrities getting their kids into nicer schools, dads who own construction companies donating to unis, etc. the list of stereotypes is endless.
Biological reality does not really care much for our emotional constructs, as others will always come along with their own.
It was fact that pagan gods controlled reality until it wasn’t. At least those ideologies were backed by fun imagery. Meritocracy is also nonsense, but easier to see as it doesn’t distract by flooding the imagination.
Having been in a sector of fintech that many sex workers used, I can say with confidence that the majority of the women within were single moms who simply couldn't or didn't have access to the social net to feed their children and aren't doing it because they want to.
It was entirely eye-opening to see how sad it is when you're talking with a young women trying to sell their bitcoin at 2am to pay for rent before they get evicted and have enough to buy baby formula and diapers.
The US is so backwards, they can show the most depraved forms of violence and cruelty imaginable and call it entertainment with out batting an eye, but showing the Human form in any sexual manner is somehow cause for alarm and deemed perverse and promoting rape culture if you believe some of the most absurd in Society.
Whereas in Europe and Asia nudity is completely accepted in many public areas, and sex work is tolerated, legal and is just another, albeit uncommon, thing people do for a living and nothing more.
As for this article, its showing how pervasive the Panopticon this form of the Internet is and underscore the idea that 'you are the product' mantra about 'free' services. We really need a different Internet already. Porn is and will always be a big component of the Internet, but much like the antics you had when you were an adolescent you soon realize their is much more value in other things and move on.
> Having been in a sector of fintech that many sex workers used, I can say with confidence that the majority of the women within were single moms who simply couldn't or didn't have access to the social net to feed their children and aren't doing it because they want to.
This is crazily important.
However ... it still doesn't get to the question of why anyone would consider being on OnlyFans (I'm not discussing in-person sex work) to be more problematic than having to do some other sort of low-paid, low-status, boring, dead-end, exploitative job (and remember, OnlyFans is a classic long-tail situation: for most people on it, it is low paid).
The big picture is that we live in a society which despite occasional flowery words from a senator here and there does not actually value and care for all of its members. We continuously and repeatedly place our neighbors, family, friends, colleagues in situations where in order to survive they have to take options they do not really want to take.
We could take much better care of each other. We could make the bad options much better. We could do both.
> Whereas in Europe and Asia nudity is completely accepted in many public areas, and sex work is tolerated, legal and is just another, albeit uncommon, thing people do for a living and nothing more
This is way overemphasized on the Internet by people who don't have much experience with living in Europe. It's similar to Europeans imagining that in the US it's an everyday thing that people are dying left and right because they can't pay for an emergency ambulance to take them to the hospital.
Nudity may be less stigmatized than in America, but prostitution is not something normal people as just another job that they'd be happy if their daughter chose it. On the surface, people may seem more tolerant of it, but privately they definitely act differently.
Why do we see so few Dutch and Swedish and Danish emancipated free empowered women self-actualize through porn work? Why is it always poorer Eastern European Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Russian women at the top of porn star lists?
> Nudity may be less stigmatized than in America, but prostitution is not something normal people as just another job that they'd be happy if their daughter chose it. On the surface, people may seem more tolerant of it, but privately they definitely act differently.
When I was in my last year of apprenticeship in Switzerland I managed one the estates of the owner's homes for most of the year while they worked in Bern, which included the investment homes they had in Zurich and in Lussane. It was where generational wealthy people parked their money, guess who our neighbors were? High class Swiss escorts, I know this because I met them and asked to keep an eye on things while I was away and gave them vegetables from our farm in exchange as a good gesture of will.
I lived in S. Germany in what was once Ag land but had been urbanized for wealthy 'Green minded' Germans, where prostitution is once again legal. I got chatted up on the train a few times only to find out (by my then German-Anglo fiance) it was a meet and greet tactic they use to get them into the brothels and is apparently common to use on foreigners and university students. They were all German not one was Eastern European, which to be honest is what I'm more physically attracted to than most Western Europeans.
I can go on here about working Summers in Croatia, and Italy that included catering to nude sunbathing crowds in camp sites and resorts which are frequented mainly by other Western Europeans, but suffice it to say: I was born and raised in CA, but I've lived and worked in Europe long enough to stand by my claims and spent my Summers as a child in the coast of Spain as I'm half S. European myself. Where the local 'puti-club' is just another thing people joke about since its so common.
> Why do we see so few Dutch and Swedish and Danish emancipated free empowered women self-actualize through porn work?
First, as I outlined already and my first hand experiences: I don't think sex work is empowering at all and often has more to do with poverty and dire economic circumstances then the tired narrative of it being so that's shoved down our collective throats by this neo-femisnist narrative. Which is why you see the higher frequency of E. European women you mentioned in those situations instead of a women from wealthy Nordic country with good social nets and social mobility.
Well, it's entirely possible that I'm underestimating how prude America is, as I haven't lived there.
In some ways it seems America is quite hyperfixated on sex, but in very specific ways with specific taboos. Like nipples are the end of the world, but selling anything from cars to hamburgers with sexy women is A-OK. Just paste a sticker on the nipples at least, then it's fine. Cheerleaders, boxing ring sign holding girls etc. etc.
In contrast, the European things you mention, like bathing and saunas and beaches are not about drooling over bodies, but just being normally without clothes, often among family. Not sexually.
I think these need to be distinguished. Sexuality isn't equal to nudity.
> Well, it's entirely possible that I'm underestimating how prude America is, as I haven't lived there.
I think its incredibly distorted, the US overly sells Sex as an image to sell things and links it to everything it can.
Not least of which is porn and the Valley in SoCal as opposed to NorCal refers to the what was Ground Zero for Porn where all the old studios were based out of and was where most of the online stuff was created. Though Japan seems to have the highest production in terms of population-to-content if I recall correctly, which again coincides with bad economic situations, specifically under-employment and very low marriage/fertility rates.
Your edit was well timed, as you pretty much echo what I wrote. It's so weird... in University you're almost encouraged to do it all, but then when you get to the professional setting and you reach low level management position in an office setting you're briefed on sexual harassment so much you're almost terrified any encounter with the opposite sex will be deemed rape. It's horrible and really not that much of an issue as they want you to think it is when you really think about it as most encounters are brief and forgettable if you're busy working.
> but then when you get to the professional setting and you reach low level management position in an office setting you're briefed on sexual harassment so much you're almost terrified any encounter with the opposite sex will be deemed rape. It's horrible and really not that much of an issue as they want you to think it is when you really think about it as most encounters are brief and forgettable if you're busy working.
It's a legal thing (threats of lawsuits and the associated costs are again one of those things about America that determine many other things). It's also spreading on campuses now, which weirdly have their own tribunals outside of the normal court system and reverse the assumption of innocence in rape accusations etc. Ties into how American college encompasses students lives to a huge extent, while in Europe things are more distributed, people do sports outside of college, regularly live outside of dorms etc. There's no college police etc. Similarly, American workplaces also seem to provide more, e.g. custom healthcare plans, a bit in the direction of how Japanes companies sort of become your "benevolent" provider who will organize many aspects of your life.
Either way, I think it involves lots of layers of posturing. In the end, many people still hook up or even pair up at the workplace. I also know people who are very politically conscious and support all the MeToo etc stuff, but somehow hooked up and became partners at an academic conference. You just have to do it the right way (risky, but not too hard for the socially skilled who know when and how to do it). It's still very much possible. People don't act the way they talk.
My bad. I guess it's more Czechia and Hungary specifically. Due to various business reasons and historic opportunities of the unregulated market and chaos after the change of system in 1990 and the generally atheistic society, poverty and conventionally attractive women (and white, which was important for the rich western markets). Poland was/is perhaps too religious for this.
>Having been in a sector of fintech that many sex workers used, I can say with confidence that the majority of the women within were single moms who simply couldn't or didn't have access to the social net to feed their children and aren't doing it because they want to.
Sounds like the majority of jobs. Although I agree that the lack of social services in the US has reached ridiculous levels.
People are hardly working for Google because they want to.
People are hardly working in slaughter houses and coal mines because they want to.
Feminists I know are selling themselves because they like sex, and controlling their bodies time economy is their choice.
One would think on this forum that it’s a gradient of statistics and not black and white anecdotes would be more obvious.
Exploitation of minors is one thing. Though, I do not see many folks lifting a finger over child political prisoners in rancid cages. So I’m left wondering if exploitation is the real issue or the sex part given cultural norms.
> Feminists I know are selling themselves because they like sex,
Sex work is the only job where you believe the advertising. "I'm selling a little bit of sex because I have such a high sex drive" or "I love sex and I need to fund my way through college" -- they need to say this because most of their punters do not want to buy sex from people who are poor and desperate for money.
How you can connect a handful of (some college educated) women I know putting their body where they want with men they pick as being anything like a billionaires sex cabal drugging and buying kids from poor parents are at all similar is some Machiavellian effort. Bravo.
But since we’re on the subject; maybe put less value into financial trade which is the contemporary value store propping up the exploitation of billionaires.
Perhaps buy fewer gadgets that prop up the economy they grift on from the masses agency.
Perhaps be more for raising taxes to distribute wealth to communities that can use it if you’re that worried.
Above all perhaps avoid centralizing authority over agency in private power. A pattern we keep buying into as a species only to realize it rather makes things worse for the majority.
Put your agency into something that tackles artificial social problems (stock values, disposable widgets sold!, not enough money for M4A or community uplift in poor areas) instead of (sad as it may be) human issues that have existed forever, and there’s precious little we can do about it. Even if billionaire sex cabals vanish, are you going to scour the world seeking out every tribal instance? Or are you simply reaching for acceptable semantics from your perspective?
In other words: walk the walk when it comes to pushing back against immoral behavior as you see it. Semantic battles here over specific instances are self congratulatory and empty if we’ll simply equivocate away structural changes.
“It’s an intriguing result, and it may lend some weight to the MOND hypothesis for further study. But it’s important to keep in mind that so far the bulk of the evidence still points towards dark matter, and it’ll take much more work to topple that hypothesis entirely.“