I think the point was that now that so much of our interactions take place through our phone it is very easy to migrate to new platforms. Think of how quickly Snapchat or Instagram spread for example. I doubt they would have been nearly as popular if they were web apps.
I started out using vim because when I first looked at it and emacs, vim seemed like the more elegant of the two. I tried both out one afternoon, and the commands in vim made more sense to me than those in emacs. But after taking a class where we were basically forced to use emacs, I've really come to appreciate it more and have found myself much more productive in it than in vim.
Just a nit-picky thing, but I thought it would be nice to get a heads-up. In the third sentence of the first paragraph it should be "your senators" rather than "you're senators"
The only problem I see with this is that value isn't always proportional to time. Sometimes I spend a long time reading an article because it is written in an inscrutable style and it takes a long time to see what the author is saying. Other authors write so well that I can follow their arguments as fast as I can read. All other things being equal, the later article is more valuable, but I spend more time on the former article.
See how that entry says "usu. with negative or in questions"? The usage in this case is neither negative nor a question, and so many, like the gp and myself, found it confusing.
A similar thing happened to me. I picked it up, read 200-300 pages and thought I could see where the book was going but found that it took such an agonizingly long time to reach its conclusion that I put it down.
My guess would be this is more for capital reasons than legal ones. It is extremely expensive to form a company of either type. I think the standard drug pipeline costs somewhere between 10s of millions to billions of dollars per drug. I'd imagine that the cost for medical device development and approval is similar.
I've heard that almost the entire flight can be/is automated now, including the landing and that most commercial pilots have to land the planes by hand just so they can keep their skills up. But I doubt the salary of pilots is really such a significant cost for airlines compared to their other expenses, otherwise we'd probably be seeing a push for autonomous aircraft.
Also: think of how much the TSA would love autonomous aircraft, you never need to worry about them being hijacked because they'll only go where the computer tells them too.
I'm curious what advantages you think Haskell has over ML/Ocaml. I'm pretty familiar with OCaml and like it a lot, and Haskell seems to be very similar, but I haven't used it for anything substantive. What benefits, if any, does Haskell have over Ocaml, and is it worth learning if one already knows Ocaml? I know that Haskell has lazy evaluation while Ocaml doesn't, but you can simulate lazy evaluation in Ocaml.
I think the difference is we all come in contact with writing every day. So literacy is required if you want to get around in the world and if you want to communicate with others. Almost no non-programmers encounter code in their day to day lives. To me it doesn't make since for the majority of people to learn to code, because without practice their skills are just going to atrophy. Why add a ton of new people who can only write shitty code? We already have enough of those, I don't see the reason to add more. Programming well is hard and if you don't spend a lot of time with it you'll never get good.
Over the past week or so I've seen a lot of food and diet related articles make the front page, and in the comments everyone is going on about how great their favorite diet is and how the science proves that it is the most effective way to lose weight. None of these people show any evidence however that their weight loss came from anything other than calories out > calories in. It's refreshing to see at least a few people like yourself who believe otherwise.
Have you tried using Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji"? I have never tried to learn Japanese, but I have heard very good things about using this book to learn the Kanji.
You can actually still go in the cockpit on commercial airlines, just not during the flight. Before or after the flight the pilots are usually happy to show you the cockpit.
I think people are willing to take criticism much better when it is phrased in a respectfully way, rather than an "I'm right you're wrong, here let me prove it" perspective. The OP may have been incorrect, but the best way to help him realize this isn't by yelling at him across the internet, but by politely pointing him to the science.
I think this would be very nice in an ebook or other long form writing where I need to backtrack to find some earlier reference. Where it doesn't work well is in hierarchical data like HN comments. I installed the chrome extension and used it to read the comments on this posting and it was nearly impossible to use. With things that are arranged hierarchically, such as comments, a single page works better than this, but I do think this will be nice on longer articles or with ebooks.
I don't think this is true. I follow tech trends fairly closely, but I use very few of the consumer tech startups, with the exception of Spotify, which was created in Sweden. Those on HN may have this perception of the Europe startup scene, but most consumers only care about whether the product is valuable to them, not whether it is original.
I'm not really sure why this is being downvoted. At least with a firing squad the person dies nearly instantly. The anticipation may be slightly worse however.
I want to second your weight lifting suggestion. Also, when you're strong, people treat you better. It's probably related to the halo effect surrounding attractive people. [1]
Does this happen anymore? I flew out of Boston the day before Thanksgiving (when I would imagine tons of people are traveling) and it took <5 minutes to get through security. Same thing on the way back.
I'm curious why that is? I remember a table that showed the deaths per terawatt-hour of each energy source [1]. Coal was the highest, and nuclear was the lowest (below all the renewables even). I don't know if this data is accurate, but assuming it is, I can't understand why nuclear doesn't have more support.
Your points are valid but I think you're arriving at the same conclusion that the parent is. Since the population groups that have lots of children are generally less intelligent and poorer, evolution is currently selecting for less intelligence. Though the parent called this natural selection, he was really refering to sexual selection, which as you noted is the more important force.
I can't speak for Danish in particular, but I know the Scandivanian languages are all fairly similar. I know a little Swedish and am learning Norwegian and don't find them to be any harder than Spanish.