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Re:Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times on Tuesday March 22, 2016 @03:46PM (#11339434)
I think quietly doing good is okay, it's the people who talk about it that are risky.
Re:Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times on Tuesday March 22, 2016 @06:17AM (#11335480)
On the contrary, I think the people who know whether an action is right or wrong don't spend a lot of time arguing either way, they just go ahead and do what they think is right. It's the people who don't know whether an action is right or wrong that get all worked up trying to handle their conflicted feelings about it.
Re:Punch Club has been pirated over 1M times on Monday March 21, 2016 @11:38PM (#11334265)
Maybe, but for the silent majority it's pretty straightforward: 1) we view information as fundamentally different from currency, goods, and services; 2) we don't want to pay for information if we don't have to and we're not going to get caught.

The gymnastics are mostly about just trying to figure out whether we're bad people or not - because everyone else's favorite game is Shame the Pirate - but once you realize you're not a bad person and that you're okay with doing something illegal then it all just sort of fades into the background.

I dunno, someone was asking why the downvotes, that's all I could think of. I agree it's nasty to highlight the words like that.
Tell that to the bicycle.
Re:Thank you for ad blocking on Sunday March 20, 2016 @12:31AM (#11321810)
The main problem I have with the prevalence of adblockers is that now you have to "block" the meta-advertising people in discussion forums that criticize you or attempt to make you feel guilty for blocking ads on your own property any time the subject comes up, and it's a lot harder since the messages are usually targeted, handwritten, interspersed with useful content, and overall difficult to detect automatically.
Unfortunately I think this makes universities less hypocritical because it's more in line with the way academia works on the inside.
I think it's just that there's a lot of dramatic and hyperbolic words and phrases in there, here's a list from a quick pass:

> religion, anyone, conviction, enemy, must, silenced

> most, pitiful, cowardice, all, should, every last one of us, ever, surrendered, tyranny, fighting, capitulate, cower, fear

> my own country, America; disgusts, good men, put down their lives, secure, blessings, liberty, lack, confidence, courage, even, a word, defense

A few of these would be fine.

Re:Ask HN: Why are London devs paid so much less than SF/NY? on Saturday March 19, 2016 @07:58AM (#11318195)
There's just way more capital per capita for developers in SF. You might want to consider why bankers in SF are paid so poorly relative to London.
Re:How Many Decimals of Pi Do We Really Need? on Friday March 18, 2016 @10:55PM (#11317056)
Inch / foot / yard / mile is a really small range compared to what metric can handle (anything), so in practice most science is done with metric units.
Yeah, but the claim was:

> Companies never give substantial raises to current employees.

and a single counterexample is enough to counter it.

Re:I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA on Friday March 18, 2016 @05:54PM (#11315483)
What are the pros and cons of Silicon Valley being the VC capital of the world? How do you feel about it on the whole? Do you guys ever talk about diversifying, either inside the US or out?
Re:An Experimental Autism Treatment Cost Me My Marriage on Friday March 18, 2016 @05:49PM (#11315425)
Sometimes people cross their arms because it's a comfortable resting position. It's common in overweight men, the arms rest on the belly quite naturally. Often people will lean back against the chair or wall at the same time.
The FSF considers BSD a free software license, it's just non-copyleft. There was a lot of discussion on Groklaw about taking BSD code, modifying it, and slapping a GPL license on top. I believe the consensus was this is OK, since you are still respecting the BSD license terms.
Re:Facebook is the new Excel on Friday March 18, 2016 @05:08AM (#11310655)
The key for me was to change my personal definition of success from winning the lottery to simply doing things well on a consistent basis.
Re:Facebook is the new Excel on Friday March 18, 2016 @05:08AM (#11310654)
At the very least I think Musk would have been a good engineer, and PG would be inspiring young people to try.
Re:Facebook is the new Excel on Friday March 18, 2016 @04:06AM (#11310499)
Yes, but I think there's also something to be said for learning to swim in life's ocean of ups and downs, making the most of your situation. For me, a successful person is someone that knows how to swim, not someone that caught a once-in-a-lifetime tidal wave. Usually it isn't very glamorous, but it's what I personally aspire to.
keep-telling-yourself-that-ocracy
I've seen the same thing at companies, where employees get in trouble for talking about confidential information that is known outside of the company.

I think the rationale is because sometimes the file gets updated internally such that the leaked info is no longer accurate and the person with access might screw up.

Re:Top Myths About Teaching Computer Science (2015) on Thursday March 17, 2016 @06:10PM (#11308029)
What's the argument?
I think the misogyny claim is because the analogy portrays the choice between a rich woman and poor woman as obviously being in favor of the rich woman, and on top of that it characterizes the poor woman as needy and annoying. Further, he says girl instead of woman. And so basically he ridicules the entire point of marriage which is to commit to your equal life partner, not end up with the best deal, the best girl/wife-object to be purchased. And in doing this he's also denigrating the two competing companies.

But then again, it does reflect a lot of marriage decisions, particularly in high society, so it's probably appropriate. This is actually what happens when personal life starts to look like business life. So probably... better not to be so brazen about it because it's a bit chauvinistic. Honesty isn't always the best policy, sometimes you have to consider people's feelings and reactions.

Re:Facebook is the new Excel on Thursday March 17, 2016 @04:00PM (#11307115)
> Bing has hardly dented Google's search marketshare.

Bing has 21% market share vs. 64% for Google.

1.7x faster means oldRunningTime / newRunningTime = 1.7. Or in your example, 8 seconds / 2 seconds = 4x faster. Sometimes this is called a speedup of 4x or a 4x speedup.
Re:Thomas Jefferson and Apple versus the FBI on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @07:18PM (#11301449)
Agreed, the test is instructing vs. making instructions available.
The inevitability of friction is one part of the human condition, and the drive to eliminate it is another. What separates humans from animals is that we can evolve intellectually by amassing tools and knowledge over generations about what causes friction and what we can do to eliminate it. But eliminating friction just means we get to work on harder problems, like how to leave this planet. So you never truly eliminate it, you just change its nature.

Btw, a bidet is pretty good.

> It doesn't matter what you own, the government will win every time. You are guaranteed to lose.

I think this isn't true if enough people decide to attack the government in concert, say 10% of the population, that's 30 million people. I'm not saying that will ever happen, but American police forces are already stretched to the limit and can be easily tied up.

But probably, knives would suffice for that purpose. Or just not showing up for work.

Re:The 'premature optimization is evil' myth (2010) on Tuesday March 15, 2016 @01:38AM (#11287649)
Except that optimizing cold code is writing software that doesn't fulfill a compelling need.
Re:The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind on Monday March 14, 2016 @10:11PM (#11287000)
Discouraging certain questions is at the core of most/all religions/cults/belief systems, it's how you maintain group integrity and subservience to leaders and deities/pseudo-deities. Questions are ultimately disruptive. I don't just mean spiritual beliefs, I mean anything that isn't hard science.
Re:The Next Front in the New Crypto Wars: WhatsApp on Monday March 14, 2016 @08:18AM (#11282358)
Sure, you don't personally need guns, but you do need physical safety at each end of the communication. Physical safety is provided by people with guns.

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