intenex

He's not judgmental about you as long as you don't complain about never having money to do things and never being able to save up money and not being able to earn enough/working too much/etc. etc. etc.

He's judgmental about people who want to retire, wish they could save up money, have boatloads of debt, and complain incessantly about how unfair life is when they keep taking on piles of debt making luxury purchases and mismanaging their lives. That's all.

As long as you're happy with your lifestyle choices and either 1. Make enough to be able to retire comfortably when you want to or 2. Won't complain when you're broke and impoverished in the future, then good for you!

So essentially, you're trying to say you're better than Steve Jobs because you can program?

How does shadowbanning even work on HN? Do you still get random increments to karma on different comments?

If not, I find it hard to believe that after long enough a period of time of noticing absolutely no activity on your posts, people won't catch on.

Also, yeah if someone is a troll I feel like it's 100% fair game to troll them back. And this is the best counter-troll of them all. I had exactly the opposite reaction of yours when I found out about the shadowban - finally! Some way for us to fight back and give them a taste of their own medicine. Assholes that they are.

There are only two problems with this - one, when people are shadowbanned wrongly/arbitrarily with no right to a fair and speedy trial in a court of their peers, and two, hypocritically I have a tendency to troll sometimes and this may or may not suck >_>

Except, as others have pointed out, it wasn't odd at all. It's actually an idiom and an absolutely common response in a photographic context. http://goo.gl/CnV1s

Moreover, it was probably just so incredulous to the blogger that there would be any chance at all that anyone would imagine he'd be a terrorist because he was taking pictures of the little monitor in the seat in front of him that it didn't even cross his mind that it could possibly be taken in that context.

(slight tangent) Reminds me of this one time I mentioned nirvana in a school essay (not even the band, the actual word itself) and the teacher reported me to a counselor as a possible suicide threat in reference to Kurt Cobain. I didn't even know who Kurt Cobain was. This was in like 9th grade. WTF?

Except it wasn't used in that manner at all. As others pointed out, it's a fricken idiom and automatic response in a photographic context. http://goo.gl/CnV1s

It's the same as if he replied 'okay, don't worry, the photos will be dead and gone', and the flight attendant misinterprets that to mean he's going to blow up the plane and kill everyone.

If the story is as he's relayed it, he's absolutely 100% not at fault and the flight attendant is a total fricken idiot.

Um. We didn't do anything much either before he killed himself. I think it's fantastic that they're on Aaron's side here - yes, it's unfortunate that it took his death to make them on his side, but that blame lies with all of us, not the lawmakers.

We made this a big deal after his death, consequently leading to the politicians making their claims now. Had we made a big deal before he died, perhaps the lawmakers would have done the same.

Our fault, not theirs. They really are representing us here.

The primary thing that stands out to me here, and what I believe is the main point of the TC post, is that edw and others clearly have very interesting 'before' and 'after' posts.

Before: "Aaron should man up, take responsibility for his actions, and pay his own bills."

Then: Aaron can't pay his bills, decides to take one form of responsibility and kills himself.

Now: "OH NO! Stunned & heartbroken." "Thank you, Cory. This wonderful post will bring understanding (and maybe even comfort) to many of us who are sad and confused today. It will also probably save some lives."

It's not that Ed is to blame for Aaron killing himself, it's that there's a marked change in sentiment and sympathy after his death.

Did it really have to take Aaron killing himself for us to change our sympathies towards him? It seems not many of us really cared that much until he hung himself - and now we can't stop talking about him.

So the point I'd like to make is there's something wrong with a world that only cares after you kill yourself. Maybe Aaron even made the right choice is this is really how it works. Otherwise he might have quietly lived out his 50 years in prison and died later and no one would have given a shit the entire time. At least now this is getting some attention.

One further point:

The withering self-criticism might even be merited the first few times around, but every iteration of creation hones our skills.

Perhaps, instead of hoping that our first work is a masterpiece, we commit to putting it out as fast as we can and aim to learn from it what we can to make our next reiteration better.

After we commit enough atrocities, perhaps it's actually possible to hit a place where we no longer have that withering self-criticism as it's no longer merited. Perhaps that withering self-criticism isn't just unwarranted insecurity - it's accurate, but the only way to get rid of it is to keep creating crap until we learn not to create crap.

Yeah..I'm always worried I'm not thoroughly elucidating how I feel. The words, they just keep coming!

Haha I knew someone was going to latch on to the Hitler comment.

And also, that would be hilarious. Why hasn't that been done yet?

There's this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-mviqUn95s

Wow, I'm with chernevik on this one. Both perspectives were great to be brought up, but frankly, what's the difference with most Americans being worse off than this person and most of the people in the world being worse off? You are in fact saying the same thing - this guy has less right than he feels to be so sorry for himself.

Hacker News fosters a prominent startup community. Of course we're going to commiserate with this guy - we can identify with him. It's like posting an article about some dude going through a divorce on a marriage forum. People will commiserate with him. You wouldn't post about an investment banker there. If you posted about an investment banker on an investment banking forum however, I'm sure they would commiserate with him just as we are with this guy.

But that's another point entirely, because the investment banker's sorrow for his situation is just as valid as this failed entrepreneur's. Hell, I bet Hitler felt sorry for himself after losing WWII and killing millions of people, and that was just as valid. It is fully understandable for them to feel great pain at their condition, as they poured their hearts and lives into one thing or another, no matter how great or how small, how right or how wrong - they led their lives as they thought best, and it ended in failure or catastrophe - no matter how fleeting. You don't tell a grieving mother who just lost their child that it gets better, that they can just have a new one and really it's not as bad as it could have been, some poor mother just lost all three of her kids! And even though you're right - it does get better, and it could be worse, just as it is in this case, that mother will still grieve the loss of her child and this entrepreneur will still mourn the failure of his company. And deep down inside, I'm sure they know logically that it will get better, that it's not as bad as it could have been - but emotionally, right now, it still feels like the end of the world.

This story could easily end one of three ways that I see presently - one, he kills himself now in the height of his emotional sorrow, two, he gets back on the hill and starts another company that either succeeds or fails (in which case, repeat these three cases), or three, he takes a steady job giving a steady income for a stable life but never achieves the great dreams he hoped to (or he starts another company at a later date in which case repeat scenario 2).

However, regardless of which path he takes, his pain in the present moment is valid. It is not made any less valid by the fact that he is better off than most people in one of his resultant possible scenarios.

Moreover, is it valid for him to want more than his peers? What if he's really not satisfied by leading a stable life with a stable income? Is that okay? Or should we slap him in the face and tell him he's fucking lucky to be where he is and he needs to stop acting so privileged and ungrateful? And if the answer is no, it's not valid for him to want more, then it's equally invalid for us to want anything as well. Where do you draw the line? Are we ungrateful and overly privileged for wanting more than some bland minimally nutritious food and a roof over our heads? Are we ungrateful and overly privileged to want basic plumbing, a nice hot shower, a family that loves us, to be valued in our society and to be able to contribute to our society, anything at all? How is it up to us to judge what others want to accomplish with their lives and consequently impugn their sorrow and pain at failing to achieve what they had hoped to?

Another thought - are you going to slap a suicidal middle-class teenager in the face and tell them to grow the fuck up and realize how privileged they are, how most Americans and in fact almost all teenagers in the world are worse off than them? Why not?

It's because their pain is valid. Our emotions normalize to our situation - always, no matter how high or low we get in life, and they're just as valid regardless of where they're normalized to. Just because this guy isn't going to be broke for the rest of his life and have his family made homeless doesn't mean he doesn't feel pain, and that pain isn't valid. He poured his heart and soul into something, and it died on him - because of him.

The author isn't expressing implicit approval of this entrepreneur's reaction to that text - he's telling a story in its full color, as it so often plays out. This is a universally common response to some sort of suffering. It could easily have been written about a mother who's kid just died of cancer:

"She heard the ping of her phone, someone late hearing the news sending a text to offer their condolences. She knew they meant well, but their encouraging platitudes filled her with contempt. What did they know of her pain?"

It has nothing to do with his perceived privilege, him being better off than others, etc. If you accept his pain as valid, this is a valid response to that pain.

And if you don't accept his pain as valid, then none of us should ever have valid pains - or joys, for that matter, since our joy clearly cannot match the joy of a man given a morsel of bread after having starved for weeks on end, or any other emotion that someone else has experienced as a consequence of a more extreme causative factor.

Having followed this since the raid earlier this year, I actually have no idea whose side of the story I believe now. Some people portray him as a Machiavellian psychopath (Jeff Wise), others think he just went paranoid nuts from drug use, yet if I were only to hear John McAfee tell his own story I'm fairly certain I would absolutely believe him.

He's clearly still in full command of his capacities at least as it comes to elucidating his thoughts in words, and everything he says is reasonable enough that I would believe it quite straightforwardly (as I did back when the raid news first came out) if it weren't for the notion planted in my head now from Wise's article that he's a scheming psychopath that's very charming and knows just what to say to make people believe him.

Either way, this guy has a crazy shit life. If everything is true in Jeff's article about his past and current life, I'd have to believe that he probably is just a scheming possibly paranoid psychopath, though still a little skeptical that he shot his neighbor to death. Fully plausible either way as I see it however, wouldn't be surprised at either outcome.

Also, I definitely hear the words "kill him" and "that's what he fucking needs" in that recording with all the background noise he sent out. Who knows what it is though.

So, apparently smiling in pictures is a relatively new trend?

Can't agree with that, even though I dropped out of Harvard to be a Thiel Fellow. Top tier uni students in my experience tend to be quite a few deviations of individual above the norm.

Creativity/individuality/freedom/etc are all very highly valued and encouraged at the best schools. Harvard was remarkably open and innovative. MIT even more so.

(Tangential, in response to the article - Harvard's very accommodating and even encouraging of people taking time off school to pursue other things. They have an indefinite leave of absence policy, which means that if I ever decide, 2, 5, 10, or 20 years down the line that I'd really like to go back to school and get a degree, they'll let me come back. Very nice and farsighted people.)

Response to Kodess's comment on the site, being approved:

Agreed, being scared of a situation isn't necessarily habit, but it's definitely not good, and as you mentioned, can even cause you to become suicidal. Put into that perspective, it seems it would definitely be beneficial to not be shy if you had the choice - and that's what the author here is trying to get at. I was suicidal and shy all throughout school, until sophomore year of high school. That's when I became so fed up with my piece of shit life that I gave myself an ultimatum to change it. Started throwing myself into social situations (for me, it was primarily my utter inability to be attractive to girls that was making me suicidal - I couldn't even start to speak to a girl - any girl), and bit by bit, sophomore year entirely changed the trajectory of my life.

In retrospect, I was enormously awkward in all my first attempts to break my shyness, and it was entirely fueled by feelings of inadequacy and coming to identify with my current state - seeing it as an inherent part of me. I was born shy, this is the way I'm am, I can't change it, it's impossible, this is just who I am and it sucks shit and I'll kill myself eventually. Utterly defeatist talk. If you think that way, if you never even make the concerted attempt (do it for 3 months, at least, concerted full force and then you can say you've made the attempt and it failed miserably), then of course you're never going to change and it might as well not be a choice, even though it truly is.It's tough as shit, but you can get over it. And over time, what the author means is that it becomes more than habit - it becomes so deeply ingrained into your own perception of yourself that you can't escape it. At some point, you don't even try, and you condemn yourself to a pointless life of suffering and missed potential. Don't let it happen.

Anyway, to finish up my personal story - I've fairly completely lost all my shyness, though there are still times where I can't think of anything to say and am entirely out of my element at a social gathering. I'm just now realizing that I'm almost certainly a massive introvert, but as has been said already here, introversion isn't the same thing as shyness. Those who are shy will very likely tend towards introversion and those who are introverted may quite likely become shy as a lack of exposure to social situations, but learning how to cope with social situations and not be afraid is simply a result of experience, practice, and exposure. Do it enough and you'll realize there's nothing to be afraid of.

As a result of my first forays with girls in sophomore year, I realized I could change almost anything about myself that up to that point I had assumed were inherent failings in my being - I started taking the hardest classes in school, joined cross country (had never been athletic before), hell, even joined Speech and Debate Team and started my own microfinance organization...went on to fairly unequivocally become the highest achiever in my school, first person in its history to attend Harvard, now on leave to build a startup, traveled to all 7 continents last year largely on my own, etc. etc. No longer suicidal at all. Needless to say, my life was entirely transformed by that one simple decision I made in the summer before sophomore year of high school - to be fed up with the subpar person I was being, to refuse to accept my shyness, and to do something about it. Small changes can take you a far way.

Tangential, but pertinent in attitude: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=q...

Best of luck!

This is fantastic. I was in Tanzania last year and met a very cool kid without a lot of options. Orphan, no money, etc, but had a fantastic grasp of English and could definitely hustle. Tried to convince him to pick up programming as it seemed like the most accessible monetizable skillset available to him. Now I'll have something to give him to show it's actually possible. Thanks for sharing!

Whoops, my bad. Not sure how I came under that impression. Seems like Olin's not free anymore either, only half-tuition now. Shame

EDIT: Ahh, I was thinking of Cooper Union.

$180,000 and under, all you have to pay is 10% of your parent's income for Harvard. Above that it scales, but still you have to be well in the $200s+ before you have to pay the full admission price. Similar for Princeton/Yale other schools with a shitload of money, though I'm not sure of the exact numbers.

Given a median household income of ~$50k in the US, I'd say yes, elite schools are almost unequivocally cheaper across the board than state schools. Common misconception held by most.

Of course HMC tops the list. It's free for everyone. Reminds me of that one (Forbes?) college ranking list that had West Point as the best school to go to, primarily because they factored in cost as a major ranking determinant.

And yes, everything's stacked in the favor of elite schools. They make you more money, and they cost less. I had a full ride to Harvard and so did everyone else whose parents made less than $80k. At state school I would have been fucked over twice.

I really want to see one for no college vs college. People who got into MIT/Ivy Leagues/etc but decided not to go to college vs people who did go to the elites. Would finally stop people from doing the extraordinarily frustrating dual quotation of "going to college matters, they studied people who didn't go to college and people who did and those who did make way more money" + "but which college you go to doesn't matter, they studied people who got into ivies and went to state schools vs people who went to ivies and there was no difference!"

In the first case you're using two separate populations, and in the second you're not. Assholes.

EDIT: Actually fascinating that they found 191 schools with negative ROI using their ranking system. Suggests that the school really does matter - getting a simple degree isn't what differentiates you anymore, it really is where you get it from. Or perhaps those students just can't match par with the 75th percentile of high school grads, as that was their ranking criteria.

I think Brian's better than a large impersonal nothing, and I assume that was Brian's reasoning as well. On that note though, I agree that it would be cuter if Brian was a personified animal like a groundhog, or something along those lines. Removes the possibility of vanity perception.

Whoah. Didn't realize private prisons existed. Forgot anything can be capitalized

This is like web 1.0 ported to 2.0

Ruining people's lives for no reason at all. Completely nonsensical, but then again when things like this baffle me I get reminded of humanity's past (and present) - gladiators, slaves, genocide, ritual sacrifice, lynching, witch-hunts, genital mutilation, whatever...and things like this no longer seem so bad in comparison.

But I lose significant faith in humanity.

This definitely isn't constrained to just smart people or curious people. I'd conjecture the vast majority of people are subjected to tangential distraction - youtube, facebook, wikipedia, reddit, hackernews, tumbler, twitter, whatever your poison.

The question is merely the quality of the distraction - if there is something such as 'distract better', perhaps we should be exploring that. Sadly, my general experience has been that the vast majority of distracted time yields negligible gain compared to concentrated pursuit of a field.

Serendipity, yes, but I find I'm far more prone to serendipity when I'm concentrated than when I'm not. Firm believer that you always find what you're looking for - and the more concretely you know what you're looking for, the faster you'll find it.

Agreed. $4.99 sounds ideal full a fully functional accurate version.

Sperm vs monkey climbing a tree to eat a banana? I'm not sure that's a valid comparison on any level.

Much better than the alternative (all consumption, zero production), but still not quite ideal in my personal experience. A two-phase approach is better - first comes the dead-zone, which is getting from boot-camp to the front-line. Sad as it is, you can't just jump straight into everything. I tried that when I first started learning to code, and I hit the same experience as you with JS - constant fallback on StackOverflow. Extremely frustrating since progress was unnecessarily slow and I didn't understand the fundamental philosophies behind the coding process and structure.

My current approach which is presently proving fantastic (we'll see where it goes) is to 1. bust through the dead-zone with brute force (I nicknamed it the dead-zone because it's precisely that for me - I can't get passionate enough to crank through it without imposing a strict regimen of study because it's not a project I can own and challenge myself with) and 2. get to working on a concrete personal/work project asap. Once I'm on the project I become obsessive and learn rapidly how all the pieces fit together - but that initial phase of consumption is invaluable for broad grasp of the subject at hand and understanding how all the pieces integrate into a whole.

That said, the ideal circumstance is that you're able to produce piecemeal as you progress through the initial consumption phase as well - Learn Python the Hard Way is a great example that's worked very well personally as an intro to Python, precisely because of its piecemeal hands-on approach. The Django Book tutorial is a nice counterexample - had to rush through that one so I could begin a project and incorporate what I'd learned before I forgot it as there were significantly fewer opportunities for incremental imprinting of acquired knowledge. It wasn't a bad experience, as I did manage to get through it in time before I lost the majority of what I'd learn, but that kind of consumptive material is severely limited by time - if you find yourself forced to consume something like that, get through it as fast as you can and start producing whenever you feel your knowledge slipping away.

TL;DR Consume a bit as fast as you can then produce

Germany didn't start WWII without reason. We didn't try to take over the world, but we did give cause for others to want to take over the world (e.g. overly harsh response to WWI). Can't exonerate blame based on one event and not the timeline.

I really hope this is real.

The main problem I see is with the brain cells dying after 10 minutes...can't really explain that one