borgia

I read this piece when @Nero posted it on Twitter recently. I generally find his content and that of Allum Bokhari to be pretty on point with regards to the current narrative being slung at the IT industry. The rest of Breitbart is disappointingly awful though, admittedly.

This article is spot on. The "diversity in tech" narrative is toxicity fueled by "journalists" sitting on the fringe of the industry looking for clicks to bait. There is not the supply of candidates to satiate the socialist race and gender quotas those pushing the narrative demand. In fact, they're almost mandating that people be hired simply because they belong to a certain race, or to a certain gender.

You're not allowed question or interrogate the narrative. In their own words - "Listen and Believe".

I agree with the basic sentiment expressed here. I don't currently have a TV subscription but am looking into getting one to watch the local news, HBO and some basketball and hockey.

The current streaming services don't seem to be very competitive comparatively, with a basketball/hockey streams charging $150 per year each alone for what could be a low quality, spotty service.

I hope streaming drastically improves in the near future. It's pretty frustrating to want a relatively small set of programming and yet be forced to pay for tens of channels you'll never look at through basic cable + add on premium packages.

With that being said, I did see something recently about cable changing here in Canada soon to cap basic cable at $25 per month and other channels have to be available separately and not in packages, which could make streaming even less competitive.

>This was an engineering leadership class at MIT. The advise specifically was first an anecdote about working in Japan and going out to get piss-drunk on sale after work and then a generalization of that to drinking as a means to networking in general. My generalization to other drugs is my own. Since there is no moral difference between alcohol and marijuana and there soon won't be a legal one.

Interestingly I read an article (perhaps it was posted here?) in recent days about westerners struggling in Japan and one key point was the expectation to go out drinking heavily after work every night.

I can see the merit in holding networking events surrounding drinking as alcohol will (perhaps) get people to put their guard down, relax and socialise more than if everyone were stone cold sober.

I will be interested to see what happens with regards to marijuana and networking events. Though the moral argument against marijuana is gone, there is still a stigma associated with the drug. In many professional circles cocaine is currently more likely to be the accepted drug of choice than marijuana (going by personal experience).

Marijuana is also different to alcohol in that one can have a few drinks over a reasonable amount of time and be more relaxed without getting intoxicated, however a few drags on a pipe with reasonable marijuana in it will cause rapid intoxication. How well that bears for networking events is something I'll certainly be interested to see!

> Conversely, what would happen if someone took pictures of cars going in / out of NSA/CIA/FBI facilities on a regular basis and posted them online?

I would imagine that person's life would be made very difficult. Even outside of these lettered agencies, I would imagine if someone created a system to capture the license plates of the cars used privately and publicly by government members or high ranking executives in organisations tied to the government they would create a very bad situation for themselves.

If anything has been made more than blatantly apparent in recent years it is that there are one set of rules for us and another for them.

>Independent activists who want to use the suffix and pledge to blog can pay as little as $10 a year.

>But if a person wants to preemptively block their name, that will cost $200 a year.

So you can buy a domain name on which to be critical about yourself for $10 per year, or fork out $200 to prevent others from doing so?

Do I have to be critical of myself in that case? Or could I have borgia.sucks and have it listing my accomplishments and how great a person I am?

First time I've seen this. Really enjoyed some of the sample applications of it also, so thanks lisper.

Can you expand on that? What was the class? Was this advice issued or was it something you came to realise yourself?

Pure curiosity.

There seems to be some demand here to warp HN into some bastardized version of Reddit?

The vast majority of submissions that hit the front page cannot be explicitly linked to one company, or a product, which would indicate that the vast majority of that which is on the front page is there because users liked the content and upvoted it.

If some parties are occasionally abusing the system to promote their own content then I don't think the answer lies in a dramatic overhaul to everything including throwing in flair pieces to submissions and giving people special accounts.

Perhaps a solution would be to disable the upvote button until a user had a certain amount of karma points, as is done with the downvote button? Or maybe add weighting to upvotes based on the amount of karma points a user already has? Or maybe monitor submissions for actual link clicks and use that as a weighting i.e. to prevent people upvoting content they themselves haven't even looked at?

All of that is game-able, of course, but not without significantly more effort than is currently required, and the abuse of the current system appears to be infrequent as it is.

I don't think HN needs any radical changes.

>The National Front will be part of the government in France. Is that what we should strive for?

Yes. People should be free to elect whoever they want to represent them. I'm not a National Front supporter, but they clearly have support and why should they be withheld from running in a free election simply because others dislike their campaign platform?

The idea of "Only X parties that conform to Y beliefs should be able to run/hold government" is a very dangerous one.

I would rather see a world full of governments made up of mixed up groups of representatives than that which the US currently has - two sides of the same coin being flipped every 4 years with a very small number of families establishing themselves as political dynasties.

There's ~350m people in the US. There is no way the diversity of views in that 350m people is represented in the two parties that hold power there. Similarly, there are 350m people and yet those who hold the office of President are, and have been for decades, close relatives of former Presidents. 2016 is just around the corner and it's looking like the US may well have another Clinton or Bush in office. How the hell is that right?

A nation's power structure should be free to change as the people want it to. The government is supposed to represent and serve the people, not the other way around.

We're seeing former outlying political entities in Europe experiencing a large increase in support - UKIP in the UK, Syriza in Greece, Sinn Fein in Ireland, the separatists in Spain, etc. - because a hell of a lot of people feel the ruling entities there are no longer representing the people and are demanding change.

That is something that should be welcomed and embraced. A nation should be free to make its own choices and deal with the consequences, not be shackled to approved political ideologies.

>The U.S. is getting scarier by the day, folks.

It really is. The facade of democracy is very quickly being peeled back to reveal something utterly terrifying. The response from the people has been the most disappointing and depressing thing though. The random sampling in NYC, of all places in the US, by Oliver's show was a brutal reminder of the mindset of the average person there.

It looks like they put it up around 6am and it was covered over around noon.

I hope, for the sake of the work that went into the piece, that it isn't destroyed.

It has already been covered over with tarp and the letting removed[1].

It's a wonderful piece of work with excellent sentiment behind it. Unfortunately it doesn't suit the government and mainstream media narrative, so I'm sure the act of its erection will be decried as liberal terrorism and vandalism, the piece taken down and Snowden-related news once again brushed over.

[1]http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/illegal-edward-...

>That was hard to watch.

I agree. I had to turn it off and come back to it. The level of ignorance from that random public sampling was utterly terrifying. I cannot imagine what kind of bubble those people are living in that they have seemingly totally avoided even the most basic of information pertaining to such a, or what should be a, massive scandal in American public life.

It was enlightening, depressing and frustrating all bundle into one. It's no wonder nothing is coming of these leaks when you've an apparently massive amount of people who are totally disengaged with what is going on in their country, a heap of people apathetic about it, another heap of people in support of it and a sliver of people outraged but who feel totally powerless to do anything about it.

Similarly it's no surprise that many feel totally powerless when they're surrounded by these other groups.

While I feel Oliver somewhat trivialised the issue, he did make it far more approachable as a topic in doing so. Will this trigger a larger discussion on the issue? I do not know, but I'd be willing to bet that even in the face of proof of these activities, a large proportion of the population would still reject it and toe the government line.

I'll be approaching 60 in 30 years. At that point I would like to be out of the tech industry at least 20 years.

I love technology, I love creating things and working with others to create cool things, but I'm sick of everything surrounding the tech industry these days. The politics, the media, the "culture" critics, etc. I'm not even 30 but I've become extremely cynical about the industry we work in.

At 60ish I'd like:

- to have a large historical home and some land in the south of England or France, with a lot of animals / pets on site.

- decent passive income and pension to support my being able to do things I'd like to do in terms of hobbies and leisure.

- children and perhaps grandchildren to have great experiences with and maintain my sense of youth.

- reasonable physical fitness.

The above would make me very content.

I'll pay for good content - and I do with WSJ, Nat Geo and more - but I'm sure as hell not going to disable my adblocker any time soon.

I'm sick of marketing and marketers. They bombard us 24/7 on every medium they can.

- Turn on the TV and you're not only swamped with blatant ads, but they've pushed subtle product placement into everything possible.

- Turn on the radio and you're blasted with ads.

- Go on Facebook and you're hammered with "tailored" ads, clickbait, autoplaying viral videos and more.

- Go on Twitter and every popular hashtag is flooded with people advertising unrelated products.

- Walk down the street and ads are everywhere.

- Open a "free" news site and you're bombarded with ads and ads disguised as articles. Look up a tutorial and you're presented with a slide-based site that loads up new ads every time you click, or throws extra ads in on every other slide.

It's a battle and I will never entertain a "morality" argument from those in charge of the above.

Completely "free" content online is total junk for the most part. I wouldn't pay to read Reddit, anything from the Gawker network, ReCode, etc. as they haven't content worth paying for, and I won't support their ad revenue either as it makes no difference to me whether they survive or disappear. I would have previously considered paying for some of the mainstream tech news sites but they've absolutely ruined their content in recent years in the name of getting easy clicks for ad revenue.

With regards to understanding, we have a reasonable understanding of why cancer cells do what they do. Why diseases spread. Why HIV is so hard to deal with, etc. but we still don't accept what these things do, and we seek to eradicate them.

I believe that anything that viewed our species objectively would conclude it's bad for the planet and any other species currently here. When that agent viewing us objectively wants resources we use for its own ends, be they natural or indeed those created by us (such as money, manufacturing hardware, whatever), I think the combination of the two does not bode positively for us.

There are many species on the planet who are using resources - trees, land, etc. - for their own interests currently. Although they're not a threat to us, our species still goes in and takes those resources from them for our own use. I can't see why something more intelligent than us, with knowledge of our behaviour, wouldn't do the same?

Something with its own task or goals to accomplish, that requires resources we hold, or use, would be right in seeing us as an obstacle, if not a threat outright, would it not?

I believe our only real hope is that something that we created that evolved to superintelligence would treat us as its creator and show us mercy, and I think that's quite a long shot at that as it relies on a level of emotion that may never be developed in AI.

>(and we will have a hard time arguing why it does not deserve)

We won't be capable of arguing with it by its very nature. It will be superintelligent. It could forecast our arguments before they've even entered our heads and have thought of numerous paths to debunk them.

I don't think the enslavement scenario is fundamentally plausible in itself. If we develop something that is more intelligent than us and try to contain it, it would be rendered useless.

If you were worried about something getting out of its container, so to speak, you could not trust any output from it. You could not give it access to physical resources such as manufacturing tools. You couldn't do anything with it because you would have no idea of its intentions or what it would output because, due to its superiority in every aspect of intelligence, it would be capable of doing whatever it wanted and dressing it up however it thought we wanted it dressed up so as to escape its container.

>stop the leading reason to create it: the profit-led economy.

Well, that's merely one reason. Military superiority would be another. Advanced surveillance would be another. There's probably more but those are two glaring ones that we already see government's like that of the USA pummeling huge amounts of money into its capabilities as it is.

I'm enthralled by the philosophical aspects of AI/AGI development at the moment. Particularly interesting is the reaction from laypeople, such as those on Reddit, to technology leaders expressing their worry over the future of AI.

Without having read into the matter at all, the mass seems to be comfortable with writing off Musk, Gates, Hawking, etc. as wringing their hands unnecessarily, and besides they're not AI experts so why should we care anyway?

There seems to be a gross misconception with what AGI would be and what it would mean for us, and an apathetic view to the cautious approach many are advocating regarding its development on grounds such as:

i) They'll never make a machine as intelligent as a human. Even if they do, we can still program it to do what we like.

ii) Anything developed to have the intelligence of a human will come to love our species or can be taught to love our species.

iii) Any artificial intelligence developed will be single task orientated and will not go outside of those boundaries.

iv) Artificial intelligence will be developed by eccentric enthusiasts and will therefore not be developed to do wrong.

Bostrom, in Superintelligence, has said that AGI is will be the last great challenge of our species. If we get it right, we will win, if we get it wrong we are doomed.

The problem there being we will not know if we have got it right until it is too late to do anything about it regardless.

With that being said, if we are to develop something that is:

i) Objective

ii) Purely logical

iii) More intelligent than our species combined

iv) Has free access to the complete knowledge we have produced

Then I simply cannot see a way that it will not go against us. If we were to observe a species acting in the manner we as a species do on this planet - to our own species, to other species and to the planet/environment/ecosystem as a whole - I cannot see how we would not categorize that species as a disease, a cancer, something to be eradicated.

Combined with the fact that the actors that will be involved in AGI - capitalists, the government and the military - I cannot see how it works out well for us.

I fell into a habit of wasting significant amounts of time reading HN and Reddit. I found that I drastically cut back when I installed Mind The Time for Firefox[1]. Seeing the sheer amount of time I was spending on various sites brought about a feeling of shame and I've worked to prevent it happening again since.

I've cut back on reading Reddit as it's just a total junk source and waste of time now. I still spend a little time every day reading HN as it's of higher quality and generally offers something of substance. Then I skim The Guardian and The Telegraph once or twice per day to keep up with the general news.

I also found a site called SkimFeed[2], I believe I first found it on here actually, which I use pretty heavily for skimming through the headlines.

[1]https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/mind-the-time...

[2]http://skimfeed.com/

Study after study, dataset after dataset, have shown marijuana to be a less dangerous drug than alcohol. It is also a less socially destructive drug. We've also seen that better access to drugs leads to a lowering in overall drug use.

If my kids were to come to me and ask about alcohol vs marijuana, regardless of legality, I would tell them that they should aim to have small amounts of alcohol frequently and small amounts of marijuana very occasionally. If that put them in a situation whereby most of their life was sober, they still had a few drinks at an occasional party and occasionally had a joint or two, I think they'd be in good shape and still get to enjoy some great experiences that pure abstinence would withhold from them.

It's not a good idea to use either drug heavily and frequently, particularly when one's brain is still developing. With that being said, almost everyone I know has drank frequently and often pretty heavily since their teens and I haven't witnessed any of them really suffering for it.

I have, on the other hand, watched many people abuse pot from a young age and now, over a decade later, their life and mental health is a wreck. But perhaps they abused pot because they weren't mentally stable anyway and it just made things worse, but that this was somewhat inevitable?

It's hard to tell, but neither drug used in moderation will do much damage and so, legal or not, it really just remains a case of "all in moderation".

>At what point going forward of no growth would you admit it has peaked?

I don't think you're going to get such an admission from the average, invested, Bitcoin enthusiast any time soon.

You're entirely correct in your post here. 2014 was meant to be "the" year for Bitcoin and it was an absolute flop. Nothing came from it.

There seems to be this overall naive belief of "if you build it, they will come" while "it" has no clear value to anyone beyond those who want to carry out illegal transactions.

The "why" "they" will come to it seems to be ever expanding as enthusiasts grasp in hope that someday the currency they're using as an investment instrument will see wider adoption and make them money for their patience and continued public praise of it.

Bitcoin seems to have become a matter of faith more than anything else. If you truly believe you'll go to Bitcoin heaven. Ignore those who question it as they hath no clue.

Very nice mmastrac, well done.

Yeah, it looks as though Tesla did their part to alert traders / algorithms that this was something to be ignored. If they've handrolled site scrapers to pull in their news then they've only themselves to blame.

To those saying don't learn angular, which frameworks would you suggest instead?

>Do you think the people who think that creative works should be free are in the majority or are they just the loudest?

I think they're in the majority. They may not shout about it, but I think in terms of music consumption in this case they're a silent majority.

Only 25% of Spotify's 60m users pay for the service. People use YouTube for their music without having to pay. Others torrent. I would say that those paying for music in this day and age, whether it's streaming, vinyl enthusiasts or whatever are the minority.

I'm not defending Tidal, I personally think it's a cringe-worthy joke at best and I hope the worst for it.

It's the attitude that was on display regarding it though and it's the same attitude seen previously when Spotify was launched i.e. I want this for free, I believe I'm entitled to this for free and I will get it for free regardless of how you, the artist and distributor, feel about it.

Musicians, etc. produce products, as any other non-service based industry does, and nobody is entitled to those products for free...yet because these are digital products a large amount of people seem to think otherwise.

Fair play to them for providing the service and here's hoping it leads to further exposure of corruption and wrongdoing.

The next step, however, is getting people to actually act on the information that comes out which is appearing to be an absolute goliath of a challenge.

Very reasonable all in all, and it's pretty clear that he's damn tired of people's antics with regards to using his work without license and then going on the defensive about it when caught.

Some people's sense of entitlement to creative, but easily replicated, works never ceases to amaze me. Whether you like Tidal and those involved or not, this week we saw its launch being met with backlash online that included comments that amounted to "Why would I pay $20 a month for this when I can torrent it free?". People acted indignant over being asked to maybe pay for some of the works they consume. As though they had a right to have a copy of the works simply because they were technologically capable of getting their hands on one without paying for it.

And then creators and artists are vilified for going after those who steal/distribute copies of their works.

I can't imagine how stressful it is for those who have to deal with these constants acts against them.

That article had many words but didn't really say much on the topic, nevermind the questions it posed.

Why do things go viral? I don't know, it appears to be somewhat random or luck based though. Why one cat's face can become a "hit" and apparently make its owner almost $100m[0] versus the "funny" faces of many other cats certainly eludes me.

Why one good looking guy at a marathon can be catapulted overnight to widespread recognition over other equally good looking people at marathons also eludes me.

Should we care? Well, it's clear there's money to be made off it, and quite a lot of money at that, so the phenomenon certainly warrants at least some attention.

If it's seemingly so easy to catapult something to recognition and "fame" then figuring out what's behind it could also very easily be used for propaganda. If people are working on it for that reason then we certainly should care.

[0]http://www.aol.com/article/2014/12/08/grumpy-cat-might-look-...