> We are beginning to see that all these years we thought it was our constitutional right to free speech that was the major thing. Yes, it would be and will be if the government takes a turn for the worst, but really what we're seeing in the US is an erosion in the ethos of free speech, an attitude that in our society you are welcome to say something that I heartily disagree with.
When did American society have an 'ethos' of free speech (let alone an ethos of universal free speech)?
The '70's, '80's? Of course this is a matter of opinion, and yours is different from mine. Would you at least agree that there is less of a free speech ethos than there was 10 years ago? If not, it may just be an issue of whose ox is being gored, if you follow me.
I'm more comfortable with Apple's decisions than some on Hackers News, so take this with a grain of salt... but the difference between what Google/Facebook does and Apple does is a difference. It may not be as vast a difference as Apple claims, but it's also not nothing.
I just finished _Reamde_ and was, overall, fairly satisfied with the way the story built towards the conclusion. It moves in unexpected directions, but I enjoyed the entire ride.
I keep hearing & reading enough good things about that one that I'll likely check it out eventually. I kinda swore him off after The Diamond Age gave me the novel but unpleasant experience of being actually angry with an author, but if/when I backslide on that Reamde will probably be what does it.
Reamde is basically gun porn (in the same way Seveneves was orbital dynamics porn) with a protracted hostage situation for plot tension and some videogaming/spy craft stuff thrown in for flavor. Not really sci-fi IMO.
I was angry at him for taking such an excellent start to a novel, and then spending... what, 300, 400 more pages, just wasting it.
I think the part where the anger really took over, as my main feeling toward and about the novel, was a scene he wrote that exists only to have one character explain another character's motivation "to them"—but actually to us, because we'd spent the last 1/3 or so of the novel with a character whose motivations and behavior didn't seem consistent, like Stephenson had recycled the early-in-the-book character straight into another role that was actually a whole different character, without explanation, without transition, without foreshadowing, without the character themselves seeming to reflect on their own change (which might have justified this scene), without doing the work to make it fit. Moreover, and as a sign of just how "whoops better patch that up without actually putting in any effort" that was, the explanation is entirely lame and unconvincing.
It felt like a chapter that got inserted because test readers or his editor went "WTF?" about all that, and it was just so, so lazy and bad, and retroactively made the treading-water-and-pointless-but-not-offensive middle section of the book worse, to know that, no, it wasn't going somewhere good, Stephenson just wrote it poorly and now, at the end, he's lazily writing his way out of his own mess, rather than fixing it.
(this is the scene between—and I'm a little fuzzy on the characters, as this was years ago—the Chinese emperor-dude and the father who tried to get an off-books Primer for his daughter, from the beginning of the book, with the scene in question occurring, IIRC, near the beginning of what you might call the last act)
I started having a similar issue with Spotify a couple years ago. Eventually I discovered that someone else was using my (free) account to listen to bunch of Spanish-language music that I'd never heard of. I don't think my Spotify recommendations ever recovered.
> it’s repugnant to characterize entire groups of people with the same brush.
No, it's not. This isn't about whatever imagined prejudice or discrimination you're talking about. As the synopsis makes clear, the piece is marking an argument about the how "There is no way to be a billionaire in America without taking advantage of a system predicated on cruelty." Warran Buffett is being attacked because he has been able to manipulate the American system of capital, which the piece suggests is fundamentally unjust, to his extreme advantage, while millions of Americans are pushed further and further to the margins.
You can disagree with that premise, but don't pretend that this is discrimination.
We don't have to go any further than the tweet that started this thread: McAfee claimed to be "getting subtle messages" from officials in the American government threatening to kill him.
> his past statements still need to be taken seriously, and extra care and doubt need to be applied to the reported story.
Why? The fact that he had a paranoid fantasy of being murdered by the US government doesn't make it so. I don't have to take extra care with the ramblings of conspiracy theorists with a long history of outright bullshit.
Why? Because the US government has a strong and long documented history of murdering dissidents, especially in south america. Side A is unhindged guy, Side B has a very long rap sheet for murder. McAfees relationship with the intelligence community should be further investigated by private parties, ignoring a rap sheet like that is just as fantastical as conspiracy.
Not that it undermines your overall point, but it might prove to disincentivize attacking smaller companies that aren't in as strong a position to use proxies -- which I would still count as a win.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)