Sorry, should have flagged as sarcasm. American Airlines yearly reporting said they had ~52 billion gross for 2023 and that is just one airline. At a 2% profit, that is 1 billion (or 1,000 million) in profit for the year, just for them. Not sure what the gross revenue for the entire industry is.
Close relative just curled one finger of that monkey's paw in a trust dispute: can confirm, they were not especially happy with either the outcome nor the months of optimism from the lawyer before the final calamity. Even after having heard about it regularly and in-depth and having read the written communications, I have no idea where that lawyer would land on a scale of 1-10. I suppose in this case, nearer the bottom but given it's the most I've ever observed a lawyer, I have zero context or basis for expectations.
Seems like marketing and brand recognition might be some confounding variables when asserting ChatGPT's dominance is due to technical and performance superiority.
I can't tell if people are desperate or delusional.
> Expecting a company to kowtow to your belief system betrays a conceited/pretentious view of the world around you.
I agree and I would call that delusional.
On the desparate side, the trust in government and faith in the democratic system are in shambles. I'm not even sure a frustrated Google Engineer can see the bottom of the despair issue. People do not believe their local, state, or federal governments can do a anything, particularly for the common good.
Take my hometown, of ~20K, that once had a fully functioning clinic and hospital. About ten years ago, the hospital was rebuilt, much nicer building but only 2 ER rooms and no critical long-term care. I suggested to my brother the town ought to have made approval of the construction dependent on providing essential services. He is smart but that idea didn't even register as a legitimate political concern. He doesn't think the government can do anything, least of all for the public good.
That sentiment is building and it's a vicious, reinforcing cycle. I dearly hope something will change before there is only the faintest hope of change.
> On the desparate side, the trust in government and faith in the democratic system are in shambles. I'm not even sure a frustrated Google Engineer can see the bottom of the despair issue. People do not believe their local, state, or federal governments can do a anything, particularly for the common good.
I get it... the angst is real... things are wrong and feel like they are spiraling... systems are failing us, we no longer trust each other, or that there is a common good. Because people can't put their finger on what's causing it, they lash out in unpredictable ways, like this. This widespread disaffection will likely get much worse before it gets better.
That said -- I still believe in free speech and rule of law. No government stopped this employee from speaking their mind -- and they weren't jailed -- this is a good thing. And Google, a company owned by citizens, whose event was disrupted -- should be free to fire disruptive employees. The fact they did so is also a good thing.
What I'm saying is that what happened here isn't the problem -- but to your point it is a symptom of something wider that is going on. A malaise/cancer that seems to have taken over and is rapidly metastasizing.
Where I lived, another organized movement included people burning down a police station, a gas station, a historic liquor store, vandalizing too many businesses to count, and shutting down roads, highways, and interstates but that's inconvenient or insensitive to talk about, especially in the ways those Jan 6th people are regularly described.
If I were to guess at the political motivation for allowing one group to be criticized in any imaginable way, while there were attendants that did not participate, while the summer of love can only be described without mentioning the participants involved in general mayhem: I'd suggest it's because the point is to create division among the masses and thwart any attempt at changing the status quo.
The source of both is the violation of the social contract by those in a position to do so and the victims are roughly every participant in both events, whether they committed a crime or not, and nearly every other US citizen.
The "authorities" only interest is to redirect blame and avoid responsibility or disenfranchisement from control of society. Thinking they have any particular interest in one group or another, except for themselves , is delusional.
That's the real issue I see with more censorship, more control, more surveillance, more integrated intelligence services, more focus on "culture". All the things that matter to them will be protected by whatever means necessary while any material concern, or hope, for the rest is just a wheel to turn to keep the ship on course. Nothing personal at the top, I'm sure, just business as usual. Sorry, not sorry.
Where I live, there was an insurrection on January 6th a few years back, incited to action and violence by the sort of "political speech" the governments of Florida and Texas are trying to force us Americans to speak, publish, or otherwise carry.
Sounds a bit conspiratorial, so not worth clicking, but in any case, there's enough "both sides!!1"-style equivocating on the net, and I'm not really interested in engaging with that sort of low-effort distraction on HN. Have a good one!
As conspiratorial as an article published on the Microsoft Network by "Russell A. Berman (born May 14, 1950) ... an American academic and professor specializing in German studies and Comparative literature."[0] can be?
Have a good one either way! Certainly, no reason to quarrel when, orientation ignored, we're overwhelmingly in similar circumstances.
Your post was the part conspiratorial and vague ("the game is fixed"), so not worth clicking the link. What good would it do? The post seems unrelated to the topic, which is republican government efforts to compel speech in order to make sure the next insurrection is successful. Based on the 1 cryptic sentence you provided before linking out, I'm guessing the link is similarly unrelated. Hence: not worth the click.
In any case, there's enough "both sides!!1"-style equivocating on the net, and I'm not really interested in engaging with that sort of low-effort distraction on HN. Have a good one!
> Your post was the part conspiratorial and vague ("the game is fixed"), so not worth clicking the link.
Apologies for not documenting the link, and I don't mind if you check it or not. I think it's unfair to say "the game is fixed" is conspiratorial, that is a fair criticism of the system we have when the DNC, and I'm sure the Republicans would be willing, to propose that, as Newsweek reported:
> The most recent court hearing on the case was held on April 25, during which the DNC reportedly argued that the organization's neutrality among Democratic campaigns during the primaries was merely a "political promise," and therefore it had no legal obligations to remain impartial throughout the process.[0]
and Salon:
> The DNC is advancing the argument that any claims to be neutral and fair to all candidates were nothing but “political promises” and are unenforceable by law. They claim that there was no expectation that they would actually be evenhanded in their treatment of Sanders and Clinton. They have made this case despite the fact that many in DNC leadership made claims of fairness when Sanders supporters clamored for accountability during and after the primary.[1]
---
> Based on the 1 cryptic sentence you provided before linking out, I'm guessing the link is similarly unrelated.
Well its an article about how the Democrats may form their own certification interruption if Trump wins and my assumption, which is not a judgement, is that given what I know, you would be more supportive of that than the event you mentioned. I think they're both childish but that doesn't mean you can't appreciate the possibility.
The relation between my comments and the article is that the summer of love, Jan. 6th, and the pandemic brought about previously unseen levels of censorship and propaganda on the internet. The powers that brought these about are apparently above the letter of the law because section 230 protections depend on acting as a common carrier, while the level of interference and integration of former natsec officers into media companies suggests the government is acting unconstitutionally through private companies.
> which is republican government efforts to compel speech in order to make sure the next insurrection is successful.
You say that as if corporations are people and that people cannot be trusted to be the judge of information and decide their own politics, which is a possible political position but not a statement of fact. Certainly corporations can editorialize and manage their content but can they do that and _still_ be protected by Section 230 or are they only protected otherwise?
Now this was a somewhat higher-effort distraction and I hope you have a good one too.
This post also seems mostly-unrelated to the topic, which is republican government efforts to compel speech in order to make sure the next insurrection is successful. Only the last part is relevant, so Ill respond to that:
> You say that as if corporations are people
The discussion here is whether republican government officials can compel me to speak because I own or operate a company (corporation or not), or because I volunteer to moderate a subreddit, or because I am an operator of an IRC channel, or otherwise operate some sort of online service on which people can post to each other. Which is what they're trying to do now.
Honestly, I challenge you to stay on topic without mentioning the Democratic party. They aren't the ones who passed this law. Republicans are. False equivalencies like this:
> Democrats may form their own certification interruption
...aren't relevant, especially when we're discussing the violent, deadly insurrection perpetrated by republicans, not a "certification interruption", which seems to be a term coined just now.
Sorry, you had spent some ink saying I was being conspiratorial rather than brief.
Here again, you say:
> The discussion here is whether republican government officials can compel me to speak because I own or operate a company (corporation or not), or because I volunteer to moderate a subreddit, or because I am an operator of an IRC channel, or otherwise operate some sort of online service on which people can post to each other.
But the 5th circuit points out, correctly in my opinion, that circumstantially conveying the message of a user in an open platform with privileges regarding liability is not compelled speech:
> The Fifth Circuit noted in its decision that the First Amendment protects the “‘right to refrain from speaking,’” and publishers cannot be compelled to publish specific articles or viewpoints. Yet the Fifth Circuit did not recognize “editorial discretion”—the right of private organizations to control the dissemination of third-party content—as an independent right. Instead, the Fifth Circuit explained that such discretion arises only where a law compels or restricts the speech of the private party itself—whereas the Texas law concerns not platforms’ own speech, but how platforms treat users' speech.
These platforms benefit from section 230, they can abandon that, accept responsibility as publishers, and do whatever they want outside some other asinine law controlling free expression.
...
I'm struck by how your stance seems to perfectly reflect a belief in guilt by association or representation since you're suggesting that it is as if the message was your own were you to moderate the forum, etc. and disagreeable content was outside your power to prevent.
I think it's a shame that there are so many angry and easily influenced people out there but the root causes aren't the mean words on the internets from other actual humans, as sad as that may also be.
I appreciated their latest reply, especially mentioning case law. I don't feel they've been flame warring with me. If they feel I have with them, I apologize to them, but I didn't get that vibe from them, either. Is it possible you're interpreting both of our incisiveness as flame warring?
I know I didn't flag them, but I dont know if they flagged me. I'd be surprised though, given their respectful replying.
There doesn't need to be an either/or if you give the toggle twice the space, just like a physical toggle. With the added space, you can show the states are related, which state is currently selected, and which alternate state will become current after the change. The real problem seems to be nobody cares about actual ui-design for human use but something that'll look good when you show the boss.
Halting on an error is often best, as is raising the error after catching it, unless you're certain it should be subdued or aware, expect the issue, and have limited risk.
Every dev project:
Hold up, couldn't this raise an exception? That's bad!
> Mitigation of many software defects is simple, but some aren't; hopefully you know which changes are expensive to fix if wrong, so you can more thoroughly vet those.
This assumes you're fortunate enough to have a defect at the outer edge of the system. Most times, these problems are created in the initial rush of pushing something out and then tax every effort that depends on them, forever, and ever.
