Top all-time · #19852
Zach Alberico
Personal blog · zalberico.com/essayphilosophyprogrammingculture
Zach Alberico's personal blog at zalberico.com covers philosophy, programming and culture. Since 2016, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 78 times, most often “Zoom in China: Software Companies and Ethical Responsibility”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Only one HN comment links this blog, in a thread on Apple and Facebook. It argues that public opinion drives support for military action and that the emoji-flag example is small by comparison. It does not describe the posts.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Zach Alberico's personal website
Most-linked posts?
- Zoom in China: Software Companies and Ethical Responsibility2 people · 25 mentions · first linked 2020-06-16
- How to Become a Hacker2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-05-24
What Hacker News says?
This is what I do, though I do think helm is also pretty cool: https://thehelm.com/products/helm-personal-server-v2?variant... I like the idea of having a node I can just plug into my network. I run my Urbit on a Mac mini with tailscale (which works great). The core of what he writes about is correct though, email failed to be truly peer to peer (as imo all non-urbit-like federated systems will) because of the incen…
Comment linking /essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook.html
on “After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel”Submitted How to Become a Hacker as a story · 533 points
HN discussionWhen you ask questions you learn faster. I think there’s some stuff here where he could have done a better job explaining why he was curious about something (the smaller computer box). Generally people are afraid to ask questions when they’re afraid to look stupid. This creates a harmful feedback loop. Part of the reason for this fear is cultural. I try to go out of my way to encourage new hires to push through this…
Comment linking /essay/2017/02/21/asking-questions.html
on “Willingness to look stupid”Submitted The Serfs of Facebook as a story · 3 points
HN discussionYeah I'm with you there, I find western companies making exceptions for China pretty unethical and upsetting: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html I think it's wrong and something they shouldn't do.
Comment linking /essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
on “Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life”Submitted Why I’m Excited About Lambda School as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI think these things have a corrupting influence on the principles of the company over time: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html It's better to figure out an exit (imo) than continue to capitulate on these kinds of things, particularly in a country that is hostile to foreign companies and IP (and particularly if one of your company values is the privacy of your users). --- >>Peter Thiel: Well I…
Comment linking /essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
on “Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016”Submitted Mark Zuckerberg and Free Speech: Mark Zuckerberg Is (Mostly) Right as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI'm biased because I now work on it, but I think Urbit is the only way something like this will work for most people and at scale. "Only" is probably too strongly worded, but it's the one attempt I've seen where I think real success is among one of the possible outcomes (other attempts I've seen don't fix deeper issues and are DOA). The issues that caused the decentralized web to fail (and incentivize centralization…
Comment linking /essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook.html
on “Start Self Hosting”Submitted How to Become a Hacker as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWhat’s interesting to me about this is that it’s not so much a Facebook policy change as it is a USG change. FB policy is to allow comments (including lies) from democratically elected politicians in a western government with rule of law. The latter is at risk so trump is going under the policy of other dictator type leaders where FB is stricter and more willing to remove access. https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/…
Comment linking /essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-free-speech.html
on “Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump”Submitted Asking Questions as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI commented this recently on a similar post a few months ago, but it's relevant here (lightly edited for accuracy). Even now you see comments in this thread pretending it was succumbing to depression rather than admit our responsibility and the immense pressure that was placed on him - supremely irritating. ### I remember seeing later that his legal defense fund was posted here for help because the cost of the defen…
Comment linking /essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
on “Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago”Submitted Zoom in China: Software Companies and Ethical Responsibility as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe only reason Whatsapp was bidded up to an insane 19 Billion sale value was because Acton did not want to sell. Note that it's not insane in terms of value (in hindsight this was clearly a good buy for FB), but insane when considering that value for your small 30 person company. That's a crazy sale price, I'd like to see you turn it down. It can be true that he didn't want to sell and regrets it and just couldn't…
Comment linking /essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook.html
on “New Year, New CEO”Submitted Facebook and Public Key Encryption as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe CCP already runs iCloud themselves in country so this is a bit irrelevant. (Though I think this kind of capitulation to authoritarian countries is wrong, personally: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html ) This policy really needs to be compared to the status quo (unencrypted on cloud image scanning). When you compare in transit client side hash checks that allow for on cloud encryption and o…
Comment linking /essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
on “ImageNet contains naturally occurring Apple NeuralHash collisions”I didn't say it was 'right', I said it was 'reasonable' - and there aren't easy answers to this. Also to clarify, specifically a reasonable trade-off for Zoom (I don't think there should be a general law that requires IDs for video software use or something). Zoom is not a company I would use at all if you're looking for secure communications ( https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html ). If you care…
Comment linking /essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
on “Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying”Yeah - I'm pretty sure this is the real concern and verifying a phone number is reasonable trade-off. I know this argument is often quickly dismissed on HN since people see child abuse or 'going dark' as an easy excuse for the government to leverage to get more control (and it has been used for this), but that doesn't mean the problem isn't serious or doesn't exist. See this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019…
Comment linking /essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
on “Zoom to bring end-to-end encryption to all users, including non-paying”You're right, and I think that's wrong: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
Comment linking /essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
on “ClearURLs – automatically remove tracking elements from URLs”Whataboutism style arguments (which are always the knee-jerk reactions that show up) are wrong. I wrote about this at length here: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html and won’t rehash it again in the comments.
Comment linking /essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
on “ClearURLs – automatically remove tracking elements from URLs”Agreed - there's so much I find frustrating about how companies manage passwords in addition to mandatory changing. - Maximum length requirements (often secret until you try to put a password in) - Requiring some symbols, but not others - Silent truncation of the the password without telling you - Failure because the password is too long, but the error says something else (like missing symbol) This isn't just small…
Comment linking /essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
on “Microsoft says mandatory password changing is “ancient and obsolete” (2019)”Cisco is also the company that tried to pitch building the 'great firewall' for the CCP: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html They don't care about right or wrong, they only care about making the most money they can while staying within the technical legal constraints of the countries they operate in. I doubt they'd stop at workplace discrimination, if the CCP or Indian government wanted to leve…
Comment linking /essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
on “Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians”For what's it's worse (since we disagree elsewhere in this thread) - I'm with you 100% here. Free speech is an important principle. The way I argue it to people arguing for various forms of suppressing it is that you can't know that you'll be the one with the power to suppress speech. In a liberal (as in classical liberalism) western society it's a core value. That's why we defend the speech of others even when they…
Comment linking /essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-free-speech.html
on “Key senators have voted for the anti-encryption EARN IT act”So much for “Zoom is committed to supporting the open exchange of ideas and conversations” - it was clear this was nonsense when they said it, but the stuff alleged here is way worse than even I would have predicted. These people are awful - Zoom should be avoided (along probably with any company operating primarily out of China, under influence of the CCP). https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
Comment linking /essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
on “Zoom executive charged with disrupting meetings commemorating Tiananmen Square”This was recently: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-July-2020-Twitter-spat-bet... Also this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-... Also: https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter I think there are some great New York Times writers (Li Yuan’s articles I always like), but there’s a lot of seriously bad writing and writers. It’s not exclusive to NYT either, Vox makes some great stuff - but…
Comment linking /essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook.html
on “The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free”I have a list here with a lot that I like (some with links that are free to read online): https://zalberico.com/about/ To pick a couple though: - The Nix (best novel I’ve read in a long time): https://www.npr.org/2016/08/31/490101821/the-nix-is-a-viciou... - Lake Success - Permutation City - Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality ( https://www.hpmor.com/ ) - True Names - Any of the stories by Ted Chiang, but sp…
Comment linking /about/
on “Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?”https://zalberico.com/ I have a couple posts that I wrote when I felt like I had something to say. I link the serfs and zoom one here pretty frequently in comments when I think the arguments are relevant. How to Become a Hacker made it to #1 on HN which was exciting (none of the others got any real attention) I really like having an about page because I can link to things I like: https://zalberico.com/about/ Plus it…
Comment linking /about/
on “Ask HN: Share your personal site”Ads are a corrupting influence on the web - the issue with framing this as more open access compared to for-pay services is that it sidesteps how the model corrupts the content of the services itself. There are the data collection and privacy issues as well, but it's the corruption of the content that's a really serious destructive force. In the end you can't even pay for the original non-ad supported content anymor…
Comment linking /essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook.html
on “Why I Work on Ads”Twitter is what you make of it. It has some bad incentive issues that lead to outrage and dumb hostile retweets driving increased engagement/follower count, but it's also possible to just ignore and block all of that stuff. You can find high quality accounts to follow and interact directly with interesting people doing interesting things. When used well and filtered properly it is the best source of high quality rea…
Comment linking /essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-free-speech.html
on “Elon Musk owns 9.2% of Twitter”