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Melchizedek

2,089 karma · joined August 13, 2014

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Melchizedek··on Fake Sweden expert on Fox News – no connection to Swedish security
Nevertheless, what he said was completely correct.

"National security advisor" in an American context is apparently not just someone who gives advise on national security, but a specific high ranking post. Nils Bildt however is an independent analyst from Sweden who is based in the US. If the Swedish government considers him an "expert" or not seems irrelevant.

While the presentation of who he is was misleading, it doesn't seem like a huge conspiracy and could simply be a mistake. The reaction to it looks like a case of killing the messenger when you don't like the message.

Melchizedek··on Amazon Deforestation, Once Tamed, Comes Roaring Back
The global corporations don't clear rain forests for fun - they do it to feed a growing world population. And the people having children beyond what the earth can support are "locals", primarily in Africa and the Middle East.

Population growth is always the elephant in the room.

Melchizedek··on Ask HN: What is a problem you face at work?
I always thought that was weird in the US - that some people work in offices without any natural light. In my country that's unheard of.
Melchizedek··on Universities admit students who are 'almost illiterate', lecturers warn
I think the test was provided by some company. There was nothing magical about it though - part of it looked mostly like an IQ test, and there were math questions and short reading comprehension tasks. It was fairly easy and the biggest difficulty I thought was the short amount of time we had to complete it.

I suspect any reasonable test in that general direction would do the job. I don't think they use it to specifically hire the people who achieve the very best scores, but rather to not hire the ones who perform poorly.

Melchizedek··on Universities admit students who are 'almost illiterate', lecturers warn
At the company where I work there is a written test of language/logic/math that applicants for jobs have to take. This has had the effect that almost nobody at this company is stupid or incompetent. They are also easy to work with - I would guess partly because social ability is correlated to intelligence.

I suspect this test is the single biggest reason for the success of the company.

Melchizedek··on Urbit in 2017
Personally, I would describe the feeling as somewhere in between reading SICP and reading Momo. That's a great feeling, and it's kind of the opposite of the feeling you get from the mess that much of computing is today.
Melchizedek··on To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics
Yes, but you can only get student subsidies/loans for a couple of years.
Melchizedek··on The .NET Language Strategy
MonoDevelop seems quite nice. I have only used it for F# but just the fact that its F# interactive has intellisense and syntax highlighting gives me good vibes.
Melchizedek··on How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Just 4 Generations
I can't help but notice that this is close to Rotherham. The second hit when you google for Rotherham is the Wikipedia article on the "Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal".

The report estimated that 1,400 children had been sexually abused in the town between 1997 and 2013, predominantly by gangs of British-Pakistani men.[7] Abuses described included abduction, rape, torture and sex trafficking of children.

Perhaps freeways aren't the only factor here.

Melchizedek··on [dead]
Germany accepted a million immigrants in a single year, mostly Muslims. Do you think that saved them from being the target of terror? (Rhetorical question - it provably didn't.) Did it save them from sexual assaults against women on a mass scale?

Also, what would it say about a population if, as you imply, unless you let them into your country some of them will choose to join the world's most evil terror sect?

Edit: I'm not saying the ban is right though, especially since it seems to be targeting the wrong countries, like Iran. I'm just arguing against the idea that you can appease terrorists.

Melchizedek··on First they came for the Iranians
Regardless of the hijackers motives, Saudi Arabia is by far the worst country when it comes to exporting and supporting terror. Iran is an island of sanity by comparison, and there are no Shia terrorist organizations nowadays (Hezbollah are not terrorists - they don't blow up random civilians).
Melchizedek··on Charles Bukowski: The Slavery of the 9 to 5
The truth, by definition, is one and the same for everyone.
Melchizedek··on Workplaces need more walls, not fewer (2014)
He built a multi-billion dollar company with a cramped elbow-to-elbow open office.

Yes, but what he built was yet another banal social media site in php. Nothing that required deep thinking or innovation.

Melchizedek··on How Lever (YC S12) Got to 50–50 Women and Men
What they clearly are obsessed about is hiring literally not a single person who is middle age or above. http://imgur.com/a/ZsS81 They are so ageist it boggles the mind.
Melchizedek··on Why isn't there a Google for the law?
Sure, but rent-seeking, parasite lawyers will fight to prevent that, so that they can continue to extract money from the rest of us while being a big drag on the entire economy.
Melchizedek··on The Middle Class Can't Afford to Live in Cities Anymore
"...cities are increasingly home to high-rollers who can pay the high rents or down payments and lower income people who qualify for subsidized housing."

If you're not rich you might as well say fuck it, relax, and be poor. The middle class has to pay for _both_ the profits of the rich and the welfare of the poor, while not being able to afford a decent life for a family despite working hard and doing everything right. It is a totally exploited class.

Melchizedek··on Computer scientists urge Clinton campaign to challenge election results
Couldn't Trump counter with much more serious claims of voting fraud that likely benefited Clinton? There is a paper from 2014 that demonstrates how votes by illegal immigrants have actually affected the outcomes of US elections: https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2016/11/17/study-illegal-ali...
Melchizedek··on This Pizzeria Is Not a Child-Trafficking Site
I suspect the lack of religion and the sacred makes people glorify banal sensory experiences.

Also, the lack of a common culture leads to using the least common denominator, like pizza, when looking for a point of connection. This is of course very foreign to people who are still somewhat part of the organic culture of traditional America.

Melchizedek··on This Pizzeria Is Not a Child-Trafficking Site
Not saying you are right, but I found a summary of what this is about that gives some understanding of why a lot of people seem to believe in this stuff: https://www.reddit.com/r/pizzagate/comments/5da0kp/comet_pin...
Melchizedek··on An Alarm Designer on How to Annoy People in the Most Effective Ways
Just record the sound of an open-plan office.
Melchizedek··on Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us (2013) [pdf]
How about capping the salaries of doctors at, say, 100,000 and nurses at 60,000? US salaries in health care are incredibly high. Administration and the like could be capped at the nurse level. Only a very small minority could realistically get higher paying jobs outside the US anyway. If your main motivation is to make a lot of money, choose a different career.

Also, cap profits to almost zero while moving to a completely not-for-profit system.

Melchizedek··on The forces that drove this election’s media failure are likely to get worse
The word condescending is not enough to describe that. That is hatred and disgust in the form of laughter.
Melchizedek··on The unbearable smugness of the press
This might not make Americans feel better but other countries have it even worse. Swedish media has been surreal during this election. You would think the US just elected the literal devil as president.

The Bonnier papers (the single company that totally dominates Swedish media) ran a story about how to talk to your children about Trump, instructing parents to tone down the apocalyptic comments in order not to scare the kids too much.

Melchizedek··on WebAssembly Browser Preview
They're concerned about not getting their 30% monopoly share of app store purchases if people use the web instead of native, not to mention the lock-in effect of native apps.

Apple is the new Microsoft (but worse than MS ever was).

Melchizedek··on Is Facebook’s Massive Open Office Scaring Away Developers?
Oh but your psychological wellbeing means nothing to the dimwit who loves open offices and thinks he can still do "deep work" (most likely trivial crap like stitching together some libraries to make the front end of a CRUD application) while spending half the day disturbing others with endless non productive talk ("team work").

Or even worse, someone whose job is to talk on the phone and use the stupid CRUD app, and who has never done anything cognitively demanding in their entire life, literally.

Melchizedek··on The decline of Stack Overflow (2015)
Most actual experts don't have the time or interest to amass points on some website. Just like with Reddit moderators, the type of person that is willing to devote a substantial amount of time to rule over an Internet fiefdom often has some personality problem. Add to this the fact that Asperger-like personalities are quite common in the IT field to begin with.
Melchizedek··on Why Isn’t F# the King of .NET?
"It has killer tooling — some of the best in the business "

Some important things are missing compared to C#. I can't use F# in the immediate window in Visual Studio, so if I set a breakpoint I have to use C# to interact with the program, which is extremely weird and impractical.

F# is a _fantastic_ language though.

Melchizedek··on Japan has a worrying number of virgins, government finds
Controlling the border is no problem at all. It's only a matter of will - just look at Israel.
Melchizedek··on Japan has a worrying number of virgins, government finds
The reason they are even at the border is that they are enticed by welfare in countries like Germany and Sweden. There are relatively rich nations with nobody at the border, like Saudi Arabia.

To the degree Africa is unlivable it's because of Africans and their high birthrate (but most of it is not unlivable at all, it's just that Europe is richer and you get free everything).

Either the EU closes its borders or immigration will be the end of Europe. Don't pretend you don't understand this.

Melchizedek··on What Urbit is
It's simply a fact that ethnic groups differ in IQ.
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