tmptmp

>>(Don't get me wrong, shit like Conservapedia has been around for years now. But most of the stuff I read, for better or worse, has been pro-social justice, pro-multiculturalism, etc. until now. Do fewer people buy into that nowadays? Or is what I'm seeing the result of more people participating?)

I am a liberal too and multiculturalism is good to some extent but I hope you don't want to bring Islamic sharia based barbaric culture (e.g. honor killing, stoning women, throwing gays off buildings) in the name of multiculturalism.

But what I have discovered is the left/liberal failure to address the rational fear of Islam (the barbaric, vicious ideology) that is grappling the minds of most sane people.

Liberals and leftists are failing to address these issues. Their response to this threat of Islam is utterly dishonest: they shun even legitimate criticism of the barbaric ideology of Islam under the phony reason of Islamophobia/racism. People have fed up with this.

I don't support Trump to a large extent. But I see that many people see only Trump making an attempt to address this issue in a meaningful manner. No surprise, he cashed on it.

Sam Harris has put it quite aptly: Liberals failure to talk honestly about Islam is responsible for the rise of Trump [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCWf0tHy7M

This is much better than my advice. Thanks much.

I will send an email, as a humane customer, to their customer service email asking a clarification about their policy in this regard. I urge all people on HN also to bombard them with queries regarding such shitty practices they follow.

A thing to learn: Never, ever base anything big on a big player, be it Amazon, Google, or anyone else. They can screw you at any time with or without a valid reason.

Another lesson: All (especially not very big) companies relying on cloud must remember that AWS, GCE, Azure may sound very good, but they can screw your businesses at any time with or without a valid reason. VPS or on-prem should not be discarded without due deliberation.

Edit: removed a bit of a rant.

I am not a fan of FB but it must be understood that FB is not a news agency.

Another thing to consider here is: FB may be wallgardened, but what about the mainstream news organizations that are sold out to various parties? (e.g. Saudi Islamists have many huge investments/shares in many mainstream news organizations)

Many mainstream news organizations are worse than FB when it comes to spread lies and propaganda in the name of news. We can already feel the influence of Saudi money in the US mainstream media. The mainstream US media is suppressing any criticism of Islam under the flimsy arguments like racism and islamophobia. This is already creating a suffocating atmosphere for true liberals.

A factor to note here is even though the mainstream news organizations claim that they are liberal and left-leaning, they act like barbaric people when it comes to Islam. I do not see any criticism of Islam (e.g. horrendous treatment of women, homosexuals in Islam) in the mainstream media. Not even the discussion of problematic aspects of Islamic scriptures has any place in the mainstream media.

Why should a common man trust the mainstream media news media?

Then you see that it's the social media (FB, whatsapp, twitter, reddit etc) that gives the people what they think is needed to be reported/argued/discussed.

e.g. FB (along with many other social media sites) has helped lot of people to learn the dangers posed by Islamism.

How and why someone as lowly as Trump got elected? This may be very complex topic to analyze as there are many contributing factors but one factor played very important role in his win is the "outright dishonest approach by mainstream news media towards the issue of dangers posed by Islam".

Sam Harris has put it quite aptly: Liberals failure to talk honestly about Islam is responsible for the rise of Trump [1]

I have learnt over the years to not trust many of the pseudo-liberal news organizations like NY times, Guardian etc. e.g. When Charlie Hebdo people were killed by the Islamists, most of these left-leaning pseudo-liberal news agencies were/are very much partial and acted like outright sold-out to Islamists (Saudi funders) when it comes to deal with news related to the vicious and barbaric aspects of Islam and various Islamic cultures.

We must also understand that it's finally the reader's responsibility to filter all news, whether it's from FB or from other established news agencies/organizations.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCWf0tHy7M

This. It also annoyingly ignores the problems created by increasing human population which is already very huge now. The huge and increasing human population is a very big problem the humanity is facing as it puts an enormous pressure on environment.

This is not to say that banks are innocent but the article puts a skewed view that is misleading.

>>For most people, this means coming to work some time between 9 and 11 AM (breakfast ends at 10 AM) and leaving between 5 and 8 PM (dinner starts at 6:30 PM). My schedule was a little different: I came to work between 9 and 10 AM and left between 12 and 2 AM. Yes, you read that right. I spent a lot of time in the office, to the extent that my co-workers asked me if I lived there.

This is the kind of devotion to work/study, I wish I could emulate. Especially, given his age, working for 8 hr on company work and then 6-8 hr on your personal work/study without getting distracted is amazing. He should, and he indicated would (which is good), not ignore the work/life balance.

Congrats and thanks for posting.

Your comparison is almost like comparing apples with oranges.

India, although has achieved some good results, is mostly a third world country [1] (barring few metro places), and thus various project costs are mostly insignificant as compared to US California. Also cutting corners regarding project safety issues, labor safety issues is not uncommon in third world countries.

It is also similar to China being able to manufacture things at a cheaper price, with almost forced labor and no minimum wages comparable to USA.

It is also similar to Bangladesh being able to manufacture clothes at a cheaper price, with almost forced labor and no minimum wages comparable to USA.

Do you remember what happened in Bhopal? [2]

Granted, the company UCIL was American, but it was the Indian govt which allowed it to go scot-free.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21v6b43j87E

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

Internet archive is a great project. It has been allowed to be created, in the first place. Then it was and is allowed to exist. This is what I like to about the modern, freer, liberal western democratic nations.

Then there are the great people who spend their time, energy and resources to make such things tick. A great thank you to all those philanthropic people behind the Internet archive and similar such projects. It's because of you, people like me have a hope to learn something significant and with a relatively low cost footprint.

I learned many things thanks to FSF, GNU, Gutenberg, Wikipedia, Internet archive and currently the scihub. I spent only about $10 per month for internet access. Could I even imagine getting such highclass knowledge at such a low cost? Not spent ridiculously high fees for college and still could learn a lot in history, economics, and some things from science, math, technology, engineering and many fields of knowledge. In fact, most of my significant education happened on Internet, thanks to such projects.

I love the USA and the modern liberal western world who made such things happen. Hats off.

Disclaimer: I am from a third world country. $10 p.m. was an expensive thing for me for a large time.

PS: I hope to be able to contribute more to such projects soon. I do contribute a rather insignificant amount as compared to the scale of things.

>>I get what your saying but humans are humans, journalists are busy and security is a pain for most people (until they need it).

...until they see they need it.

Sad, as most people may not even know that they need to go to these kind of depths. For them, TBB seems more than enough.

This incidence underscores the importance of the Internet (neutral) and social media that is not a walled garden totally. Reddit, Telegram, Signal (HN to a lesser extent, due to its less popularity amongst general public) are good mechanisms to spread news which the mainstream media chooses to suppress due to reasons like corruption, pressure, political correctness.

In US also the mainstream media mainly sold out to Saudi money, tends to suppress news critical of Islam and the pseudo-liberal practice of intimidating any critique of the oppressive ideology of Islam in the name of racism, islamophobia and what-not.

If not for the Internet and social media, the ex-Muslims' voice would not been suppressed by the corrupt mainstream media. [1] [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDIR3GhXszo [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/

Please provide some examples of mainstream left and liberal criticizing Islam. Genuinely interested.

>>It is the new Catholic Church, taking on only the worst of the qualities of its predecessor.

This. I am a liberal but I do agree with your characterization of the "liberals". The mainstream liberals/leftists have polluted the societal atmosphere so much by ascribing malice to even slightest criticism of their dogma and its ill effects.

For example, to accommodate minority (e.g. homosexuals) is a good thing for the progress of society. But the mainstream liberals apply double standards: they will never criticize Islam which is the most oppressive and vicious ideology out their oppressing all those who don't follow its dogma (e.g. homosexuals).

This podcast by Sam Harris is worth contemplating.

"Sam Harris - President Trump and the Failure of the Left" [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f27qaDQ1uG8

Sad for the poor Ugandan kids.

This sentence caught my attention:

>>Uganda's High Court ruled the 63 Bridge International Academies provided unsanitary learning conditions, used unqualified teachers and were not properly licensed. However, many parents have protested and rejected the decision to close its doors.

The key point here is "lincensed": totalitarian (or banana republics) and corrupt regimes have this convenient way of "licensing" to throw away anyone they don't like. These schools must learn to properly "buy" the licenses and sanitation certificates by appropriately pleasing the authorities.

Disclaimer: I don't have high opinion of both Mr. MZ and Mr. BG when it comes to philanthropy given their (more so of MZ, through the internet.org) greedy and overall dishonest behaviour regarding their users, but this effort of theirs seems laudable.

I am not a big fan of greedy-unchecked-capitalism but communism is not the answer for problems of the world.

A thought exercise: Here is an attempt to take on an argument made by the communist apologists about Cuba in favor of Castro: that "there are no children sleeping on the streets."

May be that's true even if we don't have any independent scrutiny made by human rights organizations to support it. But "no children sleeping on the streets" is not a sufficient condition to judge the social progress of the nation.

For instance, these children may be sent to gulags (if they happen to be of the lesser equal people) or they may be forced to sleep on floors in a dungeon and still the claim "no cuban children sleeping on the streets" will be technically true. Or even the tyrant Castro might have ordered to kill all the children who were seen to be sleeping on streets (who's to prevent him from doing so there?)

The apologists just shun away from such critique as they are dishonest or are passionate followers blinded by their faith in communism.

Sorry, it came off too naive. But please consider that first of all I am a human, and I have very strong feelings against this tyrant and many others like him, so I expressed my feelings.

Also, I didn't just put that only statement here. I made a reasonably well argument against the tyrant.

Are there sufficient number of good engineers left with Amazon yet? I wonder.

Look at their search quality. Terrible even at its best. I searched for laptop and wanted to see the cheapest so selected "sort by Price low to high", lo and behold, I was flooded with a never ending list of wired and wireless mice, keyboards, usb cables, and what not. I had to click on multiple pages before I could get to the first laptop entry.

This is ridiculous or do they prevent their engineers for experiencing this pain?

They are better off outsourcing their search problem to Google, just as Apple learnt to outsource the maps problem to Google. No offense intended.

Charismatic? Yes, but so was Hitler and Osama bin Laden. Revolutionary? yes, but so was Hitler.

So, let's get it clear that that doesn't make him humane and good for society.

>>If you think you're better, then do better. Be better. Don't refuse to acknowledge the humanity of another person because you believe you can totalize their entire life under a cheap tagline.

This is a disingenuous advice.

Will you not criticize Hitler? So, do you propose to acknowledge the humanity of Hitler and don't criticize him? Castro would have happily become Hitler, if he could get power.

Criticizing him or anyone is not necessarily reducing them to a tagline. He deserves much and harsh criticism than most thugs, criminals and religious extremists in the world. He was an extremely cruel, dictator with no remorse for his cruel and inhumane actions.

But what do you expect from a follower of communism? Communism is a very vicious ideology which leaves no room for any type of dissent. You either toe the party-line or get killed/maimed/imprisoned.

Sad, this criminal didn't die a lot earlier.

>>call center drones

How about the Amazon drones, even the ones on the "Amazon software team"? Is working at Amazon much different than what your parent described? Odd working hours, working beyond your duty hours, constant stress and some more negatives. Amazon does get in bad light due to such practices. So.

Add to that the H1B visa drones.

Although I agree with your overall premise and argument about that article, I think many if not most workers in software world are not very far off.

edit: added H1B point

Warning: be warned before you commit to Haskell. Not all is rosy about Haskell. You may find yourself in quagmire if you don't know for sure what you are going to get from Haskell, especially from the libraries. Although this is true for other languages also, the library support for Haskell is yet far from satisfactory as compared to the library support found for Python/Java. The Haskell community seems to have been divided over it.

Not so ago there was some discussion about "batteries" included with Haskell. [1] It compared situation of Haskell with that of Python/Java etc, worth reading if you are about to go the Haskell route.

It seems, the priorities (academic, commercial, library support and so on) of the members of Haskell community are at crossroads and they cannot seem to resolve those very good, IMHO.

My take: Haskell is good for learning some really deep concepts, but may be not so good when it comes to commercial projects, unless you are a Haskell veteran and also have an army of Haskell veterans with you.

[1] http://osdir.com/ml/[email protected]/2016-10/msg0001...

Solid, reliable are very desired but you have to also consider, support, trust and control.

I know this is difficult and painful but not impossible and really worth. Recent news of gitlab moving out of cloud to own infra is worth looking. These [1,2] are worth looking at.

For a start, here is a very brief answer. I'm sorry if it doesn't answer your question neatly. One of my seniors gave me this advice and I am more than indebted for that.

For anything (e.g. data, email) you think is critical for you, you should try to host it yourself (on prem or VPS) and (not or) some backup with a company which you trust. e.g. Your email address should be yours, you may still forward lot of your email to gmail but you don't use the gmail address for anything critical. Fastmail for email, backblaze for backup may also be good alternatives. Disclaimer: not affiliated to fastmail/backblaze; though a happy user.

The advantage is you get good support from these guys and it's well worth the price.

Again it's not simple and one has to do a serious cost/benefit analysis.

[1] https://about.gitlab.com/2016/11/10/why-choose-bare-metal/

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/devops/comments/5cp9ol/gitlab_movin...

I'd like to suggest to people like Troy to put some sponsor links/images (with plain non-tracking links) inline in the content. Explain this decision right at the beginning of the articles. As a reader, I will support such move (unless the content creator becomes greedy and starts putting many ads, of course I am not talking about Troy here) and ad blockers mostly cannot do anything to it. It'd be a win-win for both the content creators and the readers.

Ad blockers are here to stay and that's good in general.

I have full sympathy for the person. Recently there was a news on HN about Google cloud being cheaper by 50% [1].

We must be very much worried about Google's record of ill treatment of its users, both paid/free. You cannot and should not rely on Google for anything critical to your business unless you are close friends with someone working at Google and that too at a higher up position to be able to get out of such bad situation relatively easily. I had commented there something that I will not repeat here. [2]

I hope (I may be a fool to hope so still) this type of frequent bad-light may make Google amend its ways.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12993021

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12994769

Sorry if I sounded grand there, that wasn't the intention though. I sincerely think, what I wrote reflects some part of the reality about these things called "learn x in y minutes". I may not doubt their intentions and even grant that some of them have very good intentions. But what worries me is the negative attitude about learning such titles (and some such tutorials/articles) end up promoting.

No doubt, the internet has made many things easier to learn. Myself has been very much a beneficiary of the internet.

Take Erlang [1] from that site for example: The site doesn't say anything about how many minutes should I spend to learn Erlang. How many minutes does the author(s) thinks one should spend to learn Erlang? Not mentioned. Even at best such things can be misleading to many newcomers.

[1] https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/erlang/

One may learn any x in y minutes, especially if there is no upper limit on y. So I'd like to see something like "Learn X in Y minutes provided Z constraints". But the moment I talk about constraints (like focused attention, practice, drill etc) then it sort of starts getting lesser and lesser popular.

Reminds me the famous old Euclid's remark - "there is no royal road to geometry".

>>Systems like these can be susceptible to abuse and this should be researched and prevented as much as possible

This is good in theory but very difficult to implement effectively. The conservatives take an extreme condescending view of social welfare and demand extreme checks on it whereas any checks and balances for abuse is what is attacked by many liberals/leftists.

That's where immigration is playing a destructive force. A lot of immigrants (if not all/most) can be seen abusing social welfare.

Also slightly related is what is happening in Briton w.r.t brexit. Brexit was welcome by many Britons also for this reason.

This. I don't want to end up pleading like a beggar to the google reps (or chase and plead to google employees on endless forums) to enable my sites (or worse, my clients' sites) which are disabled by google because their algorithm detected some "suspicious" activity on my gmail account.

With google, you have to be extremely cautious (no pun intended), especially after they have become big. AWS is far more reliable in this sense, and even Azure may seem better.

Imagine Google/Apple/Microsoft or any such big business controlling your home appliances via their IoT enabled devices. They can literally kill you by disabling these devices (e.g. room heaters, refrigerators etc) in the time of need. Be warned, say no to "IoT by big corps". I hope, enough people get educated about the dangers posed by this.

I wonder, where is Snowden now? What has he to say about it? Has he ever spoken anything against the oppression done by the Russian govt?

We should be asking him tough questions, not just joining in praising him to be some sort of hero, who is cozying up with criminals in Kremlin.