charlesray

I agree. It seems no one is capable of saying that math and science are extremely important while also admitting that advanced math and science are actually not used in the day-to-day lives of most adults. Why is that so hard?

It's exclusively a shift in perception.

To compare the Internet with a ship or smoke signals requires a level of ignorance and cognitive dissonance that I simply cannot fathom.

This is the first era in history in which we have a complete, unobstructed view of the world. We can communicate instantly with anyone, anywhere. We can share our culture and our ideals instantly with anyone, anywhere. What does this mean for traditional powers? Does it mean they will last longer or die sooner? I don't know the answer to that question. But to suggest that this era is not special is incredibly short-sighted.

I simply don't believe any past statistics on things like this are relevant in the modern era.

Sure. But, I mean, look at some of the points they try to make. The situation in Syria is supposedly evidence of the decline of US power. No, Syria is evidence of the US public's unwillingness to contribute more American blood to a foreign war. We spent the last century dying in various jungles and deserts without much to show for it. It simply illustrates that foreign military power, in many conflicts, accomplishes very little. We could be MORE powerful, that fact still wouldn't change.

The stupidest part of the article, though, was part about young Americans not thinking the US is great. Uh, newsflash: the suggestion that the US is objectively the greatest country in every way has always been absurd. The fact that young Americans now realize this isn't indicative of anything. Again, we could be getting MORE powerful and MORE influential, it still wouldn't affect the absurdity of that statement.

This article feels like it should have been written by a Redditor, not a real BBC journalist.

Reddit has something like 3m active accounts and 150m unique visitors in a typical month. The Blackout2015 sub has 37k subscribers. Make no mistake: this and the fatpeoplehate protest are an absolute drop in the bucket in terms of Reddit's overall user base. It's only notable for how easy it is for a relatively small group to completely control the narrative on /r/all.

These people are trying to organize a blackout for July 10th-12th. I hope they do. You know what will happen? Reddit will return to normal. For two days no one will talk about Pao or Victoria and they'll realize literally no one cares about their protest.

Permanently sticky this to Reddit so they stop thinking they're a representative sample of the population at large.

>I'm glad you are finally catching up to the rest of the developed world.

We are the 18th country to entirely legalize gay marriage.

>Sounds like cabs need "body" cameras (interior cams that can't be turned off?) as much as cops do.

That's what Paris needs, from the sound of it. Pittsburgh just needs competition, which we now have. The cabs haven't gotten any better, though. They still effectively don't exist, I almost never see one, and as far as I know they continue to almost exclusively serve the airport...probably because, until recently, Uber and Lyft weren't allowed to pick up riders from the airport. Maybe Yellow Cab will start improving their service now? But I doubt it.

I live in Pittsburgh and the situation isn't much better. Taxi service effectively doesn't exist here. One newspaper wrote a "review" of sorts of Pittsburgh Yellow Cab and found that, for the most part, they wouldn't take you anywhere put the airport. The author would call them, ask for a ride to the airport, get a cab at his door immediately, then change his destination once he got in the car. They made him get out of the car every time.

Everyone I know who lived here before Uber/Lyft has a story about going out to the bars, calling a taxi, waiting two hours for it to come, and ending up walking two more hours home because the taxi never arrived. And I'm sure many more people have had the same experience and simple chosen to drive drunk. It's quite literally a publicly safety issue. Luckily Uber and Lyft came along two years ago and are now operating legally.

The #1 thing we've all learned from this debacle is that many, many cab companies are the scum of the earth. To be fair, though, some are still good. In Chicago, for example, you can hail a cab without even trying. You can go to the bathroom and find a cab waiting for you in the toilet. They are everywhere, they are reasonably priced, and they know the city a hell of a lot better than most Uber drivers. They continue to thrive because they are full time professionals who provide a better service than Uber and Lyft. That's a lesson the drivers in Paris and Pittsburgh need to learn.

Your concern is understandable but it's incredibly naive to think Microsoft is the same company they were in the 90s.

He says it takes 4-5 minutes, but you might need to experiment with the best times for you, plus it involves crafting a lid out of foil. This is a preposterous amount of effort compared to removing pizza from a box and stuffing it into your face, or even just throwing it in the microwave for 20 seconds.

People are just going to look at their phones more often if they can't hear or feel notifications.

How does one get to the point of making this video and posting it online without realizing that this amount of effort is completely antithetical to the idea of eating day-old pizza?

Which book?

>You know, in theory this is true. In practice, I've been in this situation a couple of times in my career. And it sucked. Hard. It was soul crushing. It was depressing.

I'm in a similar boat. Not as bad as your experience sounds, but I would definitely consider it an unchallenging job that leaves me feeling more stressed than anything. I have lots of ideas I want to pursue in my free time, but I know that if I get involved in a project it will make time go by quicker and I'll just have to be back at work sooner. Everything I do in my off time is designed to make it feel as long as possible. I haven't read a book in months. Sometimes I don't even want to watch TV because it's too entertaining.

God damn that's depressing to write down.

>But hey, i'm not really happy with apple anymore either, so I am an equal-opportunity cynic.

I was going to say, pretty much all the major players are doing the same things you criticize Microsoft for. That said, while I'm happy that they backtracked on the Xbox One nonsense, the fact that they went there to begin with makes it clear that they would return to the same old Microsoft if they ever got the chance. How did they ever think those "features" were acceptable?

Microsoft used to be a company that produced terrible software and was yet utterly dominant. They're now a company that produces beautiful software (in my opinion) and are entirely unable to get people to buy it. I don't own a Windows tablet or a Windows phone, because the app selection is awful, but I've used both and they are fantastic. Speaking of which, with all their money, how are they not paying app developers to port things to their platform? With their marketing expertise, how are they not just shoving these phones into people's hands? When people think of Ballmer they think of Vista or "DEVELOPERS!" or throwing chairs about Google. I think of his failure to drive adoption.

Partnering with Yahoo (or increasing their partnership) is a potential long-term revenue stream for Mozilla if Google decides to back out of their deal (which, afaik, they show no sign of doing), but I'm not sure bundling the Yahoo toolbar with what would be a good browser is the way to go about that.

I highly doubt that had much, if anything, do with the netbook's decline. From the beginning it was just a cheap, small laptop. Tablets are as cheap, smaller, and run operating systems that are designed for low-power systems, so they feel faster. The few people (e.g. me) who actually wanted a keyboard moved on to low-end ultrabooks.

>So... you do know why.

Oh shit, did I accidentally click on Reddit?

>How many comments and posts over the last few weeks have been all about the NSA snooping on your data with these big corps handing everything over?

I don't know, I haven't written any of those comments.

>They cannot win if the world was full of people who thought and acted like you, but I'd put my money that it isn't and that organizations like Canonical can (and should) compete against big tech companies.

They can't win if the phone market is in any way based on merit. Canonical's only hope lies in the massive success of a truly awful phone like the Galaxy S series.

I don't know why anyone would want to use an Ubuntu smartphone, excluding the obvious free software implications. It's guaranteed to be worse than virtually everything else on the market. And why would Canonical even want to get into this business. You're competing against Apple, Google, Microsoft and Blackberry. They cannot win.

Unity is passably good. It is usable. It is a step forward from where Linux interfaces were years ago. But it is awful compared to just about anything other than TouchWiz.

Calling every asshole a racist is a slippery fucking slope.

The only adult I know who is scared of dogs is from Pakistan. You are an adult, scared of dogs, and from a country that borders Pakistan. Is this racism or is it an observation based on fact?

I just think it's laughable to assume that Google would shut down a product for no good reason. I don't think Google Reader's user base was nearly as large as the loud complaints would have you think.

That said, I gave Feedly a shot the other day and immediately deleted my Reddit account. I haven't been back on Reddit except to read silly football transfer rumors in a week and a half. I feel so much more sane. So there's that.