Really deserves more attention from the HN community. The article author analogizes this to patent trolling on Nintendo's part and, from the patent descriptions, I'm inclined to agree. There's plenty prior art in gaming that one would hope ought to invalidate the patents easily.
Liberals were demonized by the far left just as much, being castigated for reminding the public of the importance of "freeze peach"(sic) when the left wanted to suppress "misinformation" and pointing out that the Popper's paradox of tolerance did not excuse one's own intolerant behavior.
I have to agree. The hard liners and fanatics insisted "you're either with us 100% or against us; no compromises" and then were surprised to be surrounded by people against them on election day.
What little hope there is for the Democrats to recover lies in repudiating and purging these hard liners. If they double down, they'll lose just as badly next time.
Uncertainty about how erratic US domestic and foreign policy is going to become as a result of the election is probably going to drop spending on US products globally, including software and high tech. If HNers were unhappy about tech layoffs now, well, IMO the public just voted for someone likely to cause even more of them.
We'll see. However, that tactic of fear mongering and emotional manipulation only works for so long. You can only tell the American public the world is going to end so many times before they stop believing you.
That's because the US west coast is just waking up and sitting down at their computers right about now. The next few hours will undoubtedly be, um, challenging for the moderators.
> "...so did every other country in the world, and the US has had far lower than most other places..."
And you fail to see why that might be uninteresting and unconvincing to a low income voter struggling even harder to make ends meet? Maybe even infuriating enough to vote against whoever said it?
I'm trying to treat people like adults. They're suffering because of worldwide macroeconomic conditions that are out of Biden's control, but Biden's administration has managed to make the suffering less than in other places. Other sources of suffering include policies which the Republicans themselves have been pursuing.
Imagine someone buys a Kia hoping to reduce how much they pay in gasoline; but then the price of gasoline doubles, and they end up paying more than they were before anyway; and so they say, "Kia is a terrible car, it's so expensive to fill up, I'm going to buy a Hummer instead".
That's what voting for Trump in this situation is like: at minimum he's going to enable rich oligarchs to squeeze low-income voters even harder, and at worst he's going to trash the economy by raising tariffs, deporting working immigrants, and politicizing the federal reserve (lowering interest rates and triggering even more inflation).
I think normal voters are perfectly capable of understanding this. It's you who seem to be saying that low income voters are incapable of understanding this and should instead be lied to.
> "I think normal voters are perfectly capable of understanding this. It's you who seem to be saying that low income voters are incapable of understanding this and should instead be lied to."
I offer in rebuttal the election results (which, to be clear, I myself am not happy about).
The Democrats could have promised a lot more programs and initiatives to relieve the pain of the working class than they did. They could have made economic relief a lot more central to their advertising. People want their pain acknowledged and sympathized with, not waved away with an airy "it's not so bad".
I think we basically agree then. As far as I'm aware, the Democrats didn't attempt even to make the "making the best of a bad hand" argument, much less make a case for how they were going to address the situation.
One thing that Trump is incredibly talented at at is getting everyone to talk about him. I've always thought that the way to get him beat wasn't to trash him, but to talk about the great things about the alternate candidate. So I made it a point to avoid talking about Trump on my social media.
After the DNC, I thought we were going to get the same thing from the Harris campaign -- but it seems like in the last few weeks, Harris went hard on attacking Trump, hoping to get women out to vote for reproductive rights, leaving me nothing really to share or talk about on FB.
Trump, on the other hand, went hard on getting young adult males, who typically don't vote at all, to come out and vote for him. Both efforts had their effect, but Trump's bet seems to have paid off more, and put him back in the white house.
In this case even getting 99.99% of the way there is still practically worthless, as someone will be interacting with Excel millions of times throughout a career.
