That was my thinking too: slick looking and all, but you can actually pretty easily do it yourself if you are a web dev. Most people use truly amazing frameworks for free, I don't think they would donate for this.
There's more ways to be impolite than saying nasty words.
Linus had been treating all this situation very fairly so far, but I guess Intel just had to repeatedly try pushing very bad fixes to a problem they created themselves.
Imagine you go to a restaurant, and the waiter just repeatedly brings you the wrong order, repeatedly.
Ad restaurant: I would not be rude to them in that situation. I would refuse to pay wrong food if I would think I don't want to eat it.
If I would be hungry, I would be angry, but I would still not insult them and there is no rational reason to do so. I can control my anger in easy restaurant situatuon like that. At worst, I would leave.
> Imagine you go to a restaurant, and the waiter just repeatedly brings you the wrong order, repeatedly.
I agree with you in general, but that's a bad example IMO. If they are stressed out and make honest mistakes, even if they're totally incompetent and stupid, I would probably laugh harder each subsequent time and assure them it's no big deal, and it would be true. With anyone, but doubly so with anyone who handles my food.
If on the other hand they just didn't care etc., I'd leave at some point and never return. The point at which there would be something to get nasty about is also past the point where it would still make sense to be nasty about it, if you know what I mean.
Not that I think Linus is being particularly nasty, and as I said, I generally agree. But that example rubbed me the wrong way, I just had to speak up, sorry ^^
Most of the stuff I read about Bitcoin seems to be articles trying to make something positive or negative happen to it, rather than accurately describing what's happening with Bitcoin.
If life is a formal system, then it needs postulates. Obviously humans can’t agree on postulates. Do you have a useful scheme of postulates that you’re sure all humans will agree on? If so, please share. You’ll be able to clear up tens of thousands of years of misunderstandings if so.
Is life a formal system ? I prefer to say that we need to make hypothesis, and this is part of life. But religion is not simply a collection of hypothesis.
In my view, religion is a cultural spine of a community that defines the rules for living together. It also comes with a set of assumptions (beliefs) that are used to justify the rules, make the whole hold together, and enforce their acceptance.
Calling back into question the assumptions lead to question the rules. This puts the community at risk. As a consequence religions establish protective measures. Some of them are swift and brutal. I hope you understand what I'm referring to.
Some religions are much less toxic, but there is still the problem of their assumptions that introduce a bias in the act and decision making. People who adhere to a religion tend to forget to put a weight of confidence in the assumptions with the rational to not put the community in danger. Anything that represent a threat to the religion is considered bad, and this includes calling back into question assumptions and rules.
Science did not work that way. And this is why it evolves so fast toward a better understanding of the world we are living in. I'm not saying science is a religion or an acceptable religion substitute. I'm just comparing the effectiveness and benefit of a faster evolution of knowledge.
I'm convinced by multiple personal experiences that any community (e.g. startups, forums) needs a cultural spine and community rules, but I don't think that religions is the appropriate answer to it. The rule and the knowledge must be able to evolve and this is only possible when they can be called back in question by anyone anytime, and an objective method is used to decide. Assumptions and beliefs should be considered as mere hypothesis. Religions tend to obstruct evolution for their survival and the survival of the community. And of course many humans use religions as leverage to manipulate people, not only for the good of the community.
The real problem of religions are their beliefs that we can't call back into question. People brain washed through all their childhood with these beliefs, that we are requested to respect, can't make the difference with was is true and not, can't call back into question the beliefs and are prone to integrate similar irrational beliefs. This put humanity at risk.
That is a summary of my current view of religions. Note that it may still evolve because it is only based on my current knowledge and past experience.
That's a misrepresentation of Buddhist beliefs. The whole reincarnation thing is a teaching about karma than a literal belief that you will come back as a bedbug if you're naughty.
Off-topic: because the Buddha explicitly favours reason and testability over blind belief. Granted most Buddhists have developed rituals akin to other religions over the millennia (and also a lot of mythology that demands blind belief), but core Buddhism (as given in the suttas) is almost not a religion. In fact calling it a philosophy of life is a better description.
If it's important to include the bit, then why stop the list there? What about apostates? Autists? Fat people? People who are otherwise unemployed?
I agree with the other poster. This feels like not only emotional blackmail, but tired, overused emotional blackmail. You can very reasonably bring up the angle of people who depend on the platform for their income without dragging around the identity politics baggage with it.
Maybe it's just important to include that bit, because it actually reflects the experience of the authors? The community that signed the letter? Are those groups you mention actually disproportionately affected by this change?
Either way, this whole letter consisted of a few sentences that brought in the identity angle. These sentences correctly show that this change disproportionately affects some (minority) communities. Non discriminatory changes can have discriminatory effects. This is important.
The anti-PC crowd immediately latched onto these few sentences and now HN top upvoted thread is all about how the letter made the HN crowd feel uncomfortable.
When cis white men get threatened with losing their livelihoods by over-active PC campaigners, do you complain that the fact that they are cis white men features in the story? When these stories feature the fact that that man has three children to feed, do you complain about the emotional blackmail? Because I sure as heck don't remember any discussion threads on HN going: I agree that he shouldn't be fired over this, but why do they have to drag this tired, overused emotional blackmail into it?
> When cis white men get threatened with losing their livelihoods by over-active PC campaigners, do you complain that the fact that they are cis white men features in the story?
If they'd start their complaint with "we as white men" I'd get tired of reading it pretty early too.
> When these stories feature the fact that that man has three children to feed, do you complain about the emotional blackmail?
I'll admit I'm less tired of this particular brand of emotional blackmail. Having children is holding responsibility for other people's lives.
> These sentences correctly show that this change disproportionately affects some (minority) communities.
The letter didn't say anything about what makes the LGBT "disproportionately" affected by this change. What I read was
> We’re writing you today both as adult creators and concerned individuals about free, legal, expression. We’re deeply disappointed in your handling of clarity with regards to adult content on your platform, and the mixed messages we have been receiving.
Which seems like a reasonable concern. Followed non sequitur by:
> Not only that, the most vulnerable among us – disproportionately queer, trans, disabled, people of color and those whose first language is not English – are literally scared for our lives.
Why is Patreon having a fuzzy stand against pornography disproportionately affecting the LGBT community?
> Why is Patreon having a fuzzy stand against pornography disproportionately affecting the LGBT community?
First of all, they say the vulnerable among them are disproportionately LGBT. They do not say that it affects an LGBT creator differently from a straight creator all else being equal.
Given that there are massive mainstream porn companies that cover most of the non-queer market, it stands to reason that the creators on Patreon are disproportionately queer. Thus any change on Patreon, postivie or negative, will affect queer performers disproportionately by that fact alone.
Changes that are not intrinsically discriminating, can have discriminatory effects.
If you will further grant that LGBT people suffer discrimination outside of Patreon, they will be over represented among the most vulnerable creators by that fact. Thus they will be disproportionately represented amongst the vulnerable content creators on patreon, affected by this change.
Let's take this to another area. Homeless youth shelters. Let's say a politician somewhere campaigns on closing down local homeless youth shelters.
You could say: Closing down these shelters would hit the most vulnerable among us – disproportionately queer, trans, disabled, people of color and those whose first language is not English - hardest.
Because, in fact, all these groups are strongly over represented among American homeless. Drastically in some cases:
> The anti-PC crowd immediately latched onto these few sentences and now HN top upvoted thread is all about how the letter made the HN crowd feel uncomfortable.
I'm pro-PC and have routinely come out in defence of the concept here on HN. Last year there was a rash of MRA crap on HN, and I was arguing against it regularly. I also have no problem with porn itself, and view it myself. Now, all this being said, the opening paragraph in the article is ridiculously overwrought and childish. It reeks of tribal politics - if you can't understand why "the other side" never accepts what you have to say, it's because of hyperbole like this. It's the left-wing's version of "Won't somebody think of the children" that gets stuck everywhere it can, regardless of veracity[1]?
Keep in mind that this is what the letter is basically implying: "Patreon has to support pornography because blacks/queers/disabled people will die if they don't". As someone else pointed out, it's positioning Patreon to be painted as a bigot if they don't back down. Patreon can't put in a rule saying "pornography is okay, but only if you're PoC/disabled/homosexual", so what the letter is actually demanding in real terms is full support of pornography. Did you notice that just like Patreon and the Supreme Court, the letter author did not provide a clear definition of pornography versus adult content, to perhaps guide Patreon? Since it's a fuzzy line no matter where it's drawn, the only way to satisfy the author is to allow porn outright.
The author is free to make those claims - business is business, and stretching the truth is pretty normal when your business is under siege - but we shouldn't be taking the comments on face value and defending them. They should be scrutinised like any other business missive.
> These sentences correctly show that this change disproportionately affects some (minority) communities.
The sentences claim it. They don't show it, correctly or otherwise.
> When cis white men get threatened with losing their livelihoods by over-active PC campaigners, do you complain that the fact that they are cis white men features in the story?
How often do those stories come up? Which livelihoods are being lost by over-active PC campaigners? But yes, here on HN if an article does lead off with a sob story, usually someone will complain, particularly if it's long-form journalism. Hell, people routinely complain about sensationalism in article titles here, often without even visiting the link.
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[1] Possibly the most remotely-detached of these arguments I've seen so far: in my home state, the right-wing party argued against a new public holiday with "won't somebody think of the children". One more public holiday than the next state over > businesses will go there instead > your children won't have jobs. Seriously. "Won't somebody think of the children" used against a public holiday...
You are correct that the article doesn't show it, but claims it.
So your point is that you think the claim is wrong? Because, as I've said elsewhere, I think it's prima facie extremely plausible. The idea that minorities are overrepresented amongst the most vulnerable populations, especially when several dimensions of marginalization intersect (in this case adult content creation) is not at all far fetched. Instead it seems fairly obvious.
As such I would put the burden of prove on you when you claim the authors misrepresent their community in order to advance their point.
Now I agree with your point that the fuzzy line is problematic. And patreon can't solve this on their own. I think regulation could, but which politician will stand up for that? The issue the authors have can't be completely resolved in this context, but patreon shifted their policy contrary to how they were marketing themselves to creators before (and what they got good press for). I think that's a good reason to be publicly upset and push back.
It's a bit rich that you require me to provide proof to back up my claims, but are happy to settle for 'plausible' in the article. Why am I held to the stricter standard? How can I disprove something where no solid claims are made in the first place? The article claims that Patreon cutting out that section of their business has made people afraid they're literally going to die as a result, and you think that's extremely plausible?
Only 3 days ago I mentioned I was getting tired of this current fad to dismiss commentary by demanding proof
> So your point is that you think the claim is wrong?
In any case, I think there's some truth to what they say, but it's ridiculously overblown (hence "stretching the truth" above). They played the 'social duty to society's vulnerables' pretty hard, and yet plenty of those content creators are not vulnerable. Nor disabled. Nor are PoC. Nor are LGBT. Why do we assume PoC and LGBT are more vulnerable by default here? Where should the line of social responsibility be drawn? Should Patreon be shamed into a business model they don't want because of a single person who fits the 'vulnerable' description? 10 people? 100?
I have given arguments [1] why I think their claim is plausible. You haven't given any why you think it's wrong (other than a generic "why should it be true?", which is nothing if not demanding proof from them).
[1] The mentioned communities are overrepresented in any risk category, from drug addiction, to HIV, to homelessness (the sole exception I know of would be suicide). They tend to be more overrepresented when marginalisation dimensioons intersect, as they do here.
> What is the point of the console being Linux-based?
Reduction of brand-new OS development costs; potentially zero need for writing drivers depending on hardware setup; very extensive presence of compilers / interpreters / libraries that can be freely usable out of the box.
Roughly 1/3 of the steam library runs on Linux. Valve continues to update SteamOS, and they are still heavily involved in creating Linux drivers and middleware. Every week new games are ported, new frameworks are released with Linux support and new Linux dev game tools are created.
SteamOS succeeded in forcing Microsoft to clear up its act, and this is the main reason for Valve's investment. Their continued investment is to continue to make sure that they have a plan B. They are doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work to make the Linux gaming stack amazing. This looks "failed" from the outside because they aren't pushing the platform heavily, but it is actually a lot more beneficial that doing a big marketing push before the platform is ready.
The interesting thing with a platform like Linux is that it's not dependent on one big revenue stream to survive. Because of this, it doesn't matter if it takes years to get massive adoption because it's not burning a hole in the pocket of a company. If xbox was in the same position linux was in, you would be correct in saying that it failed, because anything less than 30% market share means gigantic losses for Microsoft which would lead to axing xbox.
PS: Atari's games run fine on Linux. Their retro emulator runs on Linux. They seem to know what they're doing.
Valve doesn't really care how many users are running Linux right now —they still have their Windows revenue. What they do care about is how many users would switch to Linux if Valve was for some reason forced to drop Windows support altogether (like, Microsoft goes Apple on their users and mandates an app store). That number may be much higher.
You'd also have to keep in mind what's keeping users to Windows. From where I stand, exclusive titles play a big role. Linux has no exclusive title to speak of. Why would it, that market is way too small for such madness. Windows, understandably has loads. My only reason for still using Windows is a couple titles I can't bring myself to renounce.
Then there are drivers and tooling, but that's just the same kind of network effects, really.
Valve's announcement that games ran faster on SteamOS had an almost immediate response:
> “A few weeks after this post went out, some very senior developers from Microsoft came by for a discrete visit. They loved our post, because it lit a fire underneath Microsoft's executives to get their act together and keep supporting Direct3D development. (Remember, at this point it was years since the last DirectX SDK release. The DirectX team was on life support.) Linux is obviously extremely influential." [1]
And again, market relevance was not required for SteamOS to succeed. Gabe Newell has been very open about the fact that SteamOS' goal was to keep Microsoft in check and have a plan B for when things go south..
I thought and posted something similar in another Steam/Linux thread. I was corrected by a passionate Linux user, so I'll return the favor. The Steam hardware survey will not appear for Big Picture users, which is what SteamOS will launch into by default, so it gets undercounted.
Are you implying people wouldn't jump to SteamOS if it met the needs of gamers? If 95% of Steam games ran on it that would be a huge thing. Lots of people don't want to run Windows 10 because of privacy issues (maybe not a huge number, but it's likely a larger portion of gaming enthusiasts fit into that group than the population at large). And is there a better value proposition than free? If it meets your needs and costs nothing, why would you pay for an equivalent product?
Well, i guess you do have a point there - one iteration was worse in terms of privacy than the other, yet the adoption of alternative OSs was very weak.
But they've gone a little too far with Windows 10 - for me at least, of course everyone will have their own "measure" where too much will be too much.
SteamOS is a "fleet in being", or nuclear deterrent. Its purpose is to make sure that Valve can survive if Windows decided they wanted to "Windows Store" their platform and force every game to pay Microsoft a 30% cut.
Until Microsoft do that, it's not actually very necessary. But it might become necessary at short notice.
One thins is that Linux users often have suboptimal graphics drivers installed (probably cause the open source drivers tend to be incomplete/buggy and the official drivers from AMD/nvidia aren't installed by default on most linux distros).
Another is that it's just generally a lot more heterogeneous than windows and mac (lots of different distros with variously up to date libraries, drivers, etc).
> One thing is that Linux users often have suboptimal graphics drivers installed
The same is true on a new install of Windows, though. First stop when the OS is running: Non-Microsoft browser. Second stop: Graphics card vendor site, to replace whichever outdated driver Windows shipped it for the hardware.
I mean, not as bad, usually (outdated official drivers on Windows, versus often-inferior unofficial/Open drivers on Linux).
Lack of GUI tooling at the same level as it is available on Windows, macOS, PS4, XBox and Nintendo.
The game developers culture is based on making money of IP, outsourcing game development tasks, not about sharing the code and making the world a better place.
On commercial platforms, the GPU and OS vendors even fly tech support to AAA studios to work around driver issues.
> Too bad Linux still doesn't play nice with most games. SteamOS was a failure.
It depends heavily on the engine being used or if custom engine on how much the devs have relied on stuff designed to wall your product into windows.
There's like a couple of games out of ~100 I got on Steam that I've had big problems with in Ubuntu. A couple others just needed launch options to prevent the game from guessing settings so wrong I can't even fix those in-game and launch a launcher program where I can tweak those before starting the game.
