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dr_toolittle

Ask HN: What value is there in downvoting on HN?

I don't see the value in downvoting on HN at all. Users with the ability to downvote will downvote comments they disagree with rather than comments that don't add to the conversation, and since downvoting drives users away, the ones that are left are cold, unfeeling, and happy to live in their bubbles while attempting to isolate everyone else from things they disagree with.

( Read More... | 1 comment | 3 points | on HN )
Re:Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes on Thursday April 21, 2016 @11:45PM (#11546929)
> I don't place any intrinsic value in the life of a mosquito

And Hitler didn't place any intrinsic value in the life of a Jew.

I just don't think it's ok to eliminate a species. Intentional extinction of any species is not ok with me, even if it is a mosquito.

Re:Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @11:06PM (#11539375)
Humans are considered harmful to the world as a whole. There's only one human species that would need to be eliminated to solve that problem. You up for that as well?
Re:Three teen sisters who win medals in coding competitions on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @07:55PM (#11538656)
> The youngest sister may even grow up in a world where she doesn't have the same barriers as most women today.

If there are fewer barriers, then you might see growth. Unfortunately this is difficult to tell. Some surveys show growth, others don't:

S.O. survey respondents 5.8% women (2016) - http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016

S.O. survey respondents 5.8% women (2015) - http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015

Google: 17% women (2014) - http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/05/28/google-release...

Facebook: 15% women (2014) - http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/25/facebook-diversity/

12.33% women engineers in tech (2013) - http://qz.com/143967/the-tech-industrys-woman-problem-statis...

10-12% developers are women in L.A. (2012) - http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorikozlowski/2012/03/22/women-i...

International Game Developers Association reported women went from from 11.5% to 22% between 2009 and 2014(?) - http://www.gamespot.com/articles/percentage-of-female-develo...

Why?

In addition to there being fewer women in the pipeline for tech jobs, it's been said that a good percentage of the ones that would've stayed in the workforce were harassed, etc. and left: http://www.vox.com/2016/1/17/10781366/women-technology-sexua...

And then there is the wage inequality problem, shown in the stack overflow survey results- see "Salary by Gender" in http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016

Possibly men are more likely to hire men, which could cause problems with growth in women's share of the market.

Of course there are also problems like having fewer role models when there are fewer in the industry, not having government and schools enabling women via scholarships, funding, etc. as much as they could, or possibly it's genuine lack of interest, but I don't think that's the case.

Development was invented by women, and it would be great if they made up a greater percentage: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-celebration-of-...

Re:Tell HN: I'm creating an autonomous racing series on Friday April 08, 2016 @08:08AM (#11454019)
You should go ahead and create a company for this, look into insurance, get some basic level of marketing up, etc.

Right now it just looks like a website, with no company (nothing in the footer with even an LLC or anything, and "Joshua Schachter is trying to start a low-end autonomous racing series." needs work as an about section), no news section, no press info section, etc.

The domain name is great, but you'll need much more to really get it going.

For examples:

Founding section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASCAR

Race sanctioning section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indianapolis_500

History section of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_One

You could probably pose as an interested historian and get information from each of these organizations about how they are setup and some hoops you might have to go through.

Re:The Illegal Map of Swedish Art on Wednesday April 06, 2016 @07:34PM (#11443264)
Court is fine, but in the meantime, I'd just find a loophole.

E.g. it might be ok to take a picture of each piece of art with a person standing in front of it, so retake the pictures or just superimpose a picture of a person with a transparent background onto each picture.

Then once you've found that loophole, exploit the heck of it and sell prints on the street with that person superimposed on the art. Just give a big middle finger to the law.