Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | aidenn0's commentslogin

When I ran my own mail server, I was lucky to even make it to the gmail spam folder. More often it didn't even make it that far. From what I can tell, O365 is even worse though.

To this day I do not have a LinkedIn account because they have historically been the most aggressive spammers of any company. The year I graduated college, almost 2/3 of the e-mails I received were LinkedIn spam.

> The most upsetting of Luria’s puzzles was a mathematical problem. He told his subjects that it took three hours to walk from their village to Vuadil, and six along the same road to Fergana: how long would it take to walk to Fergana from Vuadil? Again, every single one of the collective farm workers solved the problem, but the illiterate villagers knew very well that Fergana was actually closer than Vuadil, and refused to answer. Luria kept saying that it was just a scenario, but the villagers kept insisting that they couldn’t entertain a scenario that contradicted actual reality. ‘No!’ one exploded. ‘How can I solve a problem if it isn’t so?’

Is anyone besides me with the villagers on this one? The correct thing to do if someone asks you a question with obviously false premises is to push back!


This is not how people outside of cybernetics use POSWID. From context it does not appear to be how SlinkyOnStairs was using it either.

I think it's also trying to be too cute. The first two definitions of purpose on Wiktionary[A]:

1. The end for which something is done, is made or exists.

2. Function, role.

People (uselessly) talking about the purpose of a system are often referring to #1, while POSWID is using it to mean #2. The real point of POSWID is that only definition #2 matters. POSWID is a terrible phrase not because it is wrong, but because is is an equivocation -- I suspect that Beer intended it as a pun, but the difference between the two is if one gets the joke. POSWID gets used incorrectly because people don't get the joke.

A: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/purpose


I will propose that you are wrong.

1. We must ignore the intentions of the designers (your claim), and instead see what the outcomes are

2. Therefore we should ignore Beer's intentions when designing the phrase POSWID, and instead see how it is used.

3. The overwhelming majority of people using it on the internet (including the GP comment) is to imply that the people perpetuating the system actually desire the outcome.

So the purpose of POSWID is clearly to imply intent.


Whose intent? POSWID Is about structural incentives not personal intent, and these can be, and likely are, an emergent behavior. It’s about reframing away from intents, treating the system as a structure and removing the whole structure for replacement. As opposed to localized reforms which are exposed to the same prior emergent behaviors leading to constant backsliding.

> Whose intent?

The intent of those creating or perpetuating a system.


My most planets is 14, but my highest score is 25 with 8 planets.

My personal experience is that LA has NYC beat on a per-capita basis (and possibly an absolute numbers basis; it has roughly half the population, so it would only need to be double per-capita to "win").

This is part of why so many games on a competitive level end in a draw; the player that lacks a path to victory will try to force a stalemate.

Since this makes it harder for the player with an early advantage to win (by constraining their moves), it is considered a feature, not a bug.


How does one get Tom Noonan to play in a film-school movie?

You don't need 4x redundancy for everything. If no humans are aboard, you have 2x redundancy and immediately reboot if there is a disagreement.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: