aznjons's comments

Did you bother to read the abstract of the source provided? It directly refutes pretty much all of your points including a control group. For your convenience, I've italicized the relevant text:

>Participants were drawn from the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative longitudinal survey of community-dwelling US residents. A total of 6,157 participants (58.6% female) completed the discrimination measure and had weight and height available from the 2006 and 2010 assessments. Participants who experienced weight discrimination were approximately 2.5 times more likely to become obese by follow-up (OR = 2.54, 95% CI = 1.58–4.08) and participants who were obese at baseline were three times more likely to remain obese at follow up (OR = 3.20, 95% CI = 2.06–4.97) than those who had not experienced such discrimination. These effects held when controlling for demographic factors (age, sex, ethnicity, education) and when baseline BMI was included as a covariate.

Fat shaming actually increases risk of becoming or staying obese. So although obesity is unhealthy, fat shaming is still bad and stupid since it does not help, and actually hurts.

There are better ways to help people become healthy.

>The present research demonstrates that, in addition to poorer mental health outcomes, weight discrimination has implications for obesity. Rather than motivating individuals to lose weight, weight discrimination increases risk for obesity.

Source: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone...

This is great advice and it is fantastic because it is specific and actionable.

I would love to see one tailored for validating consumer products rather than B2B ones.

A good amount of this is definitely applicable to validating for consumers though.

I especially like the section recommending that a product and the problem it solves be described fully in text before any code is written.

When you're a young person, peer pressure and need for peer acceptance/interaction is a powerful force that can defy rational action. Young people have limited perspective beyond the immediate social environments of their family and friends.

If all of the interaction at school is in these virtual spaces they may be compelled to try and socialize in the hope of peer acceptance.

Loneliness and social needs can be hard to deal with for some kids and the hope of positive interaction may drive them to keep trying to reach out to their peers even in the face of vicious bullying.

I feel like this kind of horrific tragedy must be addressed and especially in the context of virtual/computer facilitated environments by developers and engineers.

Here is a problem that I would like to see combated with machine learning and sentiment analysis. Combined with moderation and report functions efforts can be made to identify extreme bullying and address/stop the perpetrators. Indicators of suicidal thoughts in, for example, Google searches could be a channel for parental notification to prevent these kinds of tragedies.

I am not an expert, but leveraging the technology available to help in the fight against extreme bullying seems like a worthy pursuit alongside education of parents and children as well as stricter legislation on harassment and bullying that leads to injury or death.

Well put, the relationship trends more and more asymmetric. Add in rhetoric designed to convince workers to buy into a system that exploits them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6240495

In general, employers have far more leverage over employee's lives than the individual employee has over the corporation's well being even though we sometimes pretend that it is symmetric and that the market is fair.

Employers optimize for maximum profit for "the shareholders." Somewhere along the line, morality is tossed out, and shortly afterward even legitimate long-term sustainability is also out (cultivating a strong workforce, valued for their talent rather than purely for their labor).

Add in the feedback loop of political apparatuses being appropriated for profit (lobbying) and the political arena is just another exploitable lever for amassing more resources by those with the resources to do so.

A similar analogy that occurs to me is the justice system. Yes, there will be guilty criminals who walk free of a innocent-until-proven-guilty, trial-by-jury-of-your-peers justice system. The alternative is convincingly worse enough that we accept the false negatives and outliers of the system that protects us.

In this case, letting millions suffer in poverty with real effects of poor healthcare (instead of investing in preventative care), restricted access to better opportunities for themselves and their children seems thoroughly worse than accepting the outlier "parasites."

I am of the belief that given the foundations of Maslow's hierarchy and a real education, many of those "parasites" with limited opportunities can be changed into people who feel they have a chance and pursue "self actualization." Poverty is a vicious cycle; it's hard to be ambitious in a "i want to change the world" way when you have no choice but to take whatever you can to support your family on minimum wage.

I agree completely that instead of throwing money at administrative peripheral problems like eliminating any parasitism, we should address the root problem.

Overall, people living in poverty do not have the same opportunities as the wealthy. Given the same opportunities there is no reason that they would not pursue the same "worthier" career aspirations. The assumption that poor people are parasites is the most colossal example of Fundamental Attribution Error[1] I can think of.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

Are you referring to the chart that illustrates funding as a percent of GDP? If so, I think that the numbers may be larger than you think. Half a hundredth of a percent of the US GDP is still 7.5 billion dollars per year.

To put this into perspective: The entire annual NSF budget is $7 billion. From Wikipedia:

"With an annual budget of about US$7.0 billion (fiscal year 2012), the NSF funds approximately 20% of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States' colleges and universities.[1] In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics and the social sciences, the NSF is the major source of federal backing."

The entire NIH budget is 30 billion a year. NASA's is 18 billion.

The second chart of the article shows that adjusted for inflation, the purchasing power of scientific funding has decreased from 10-30% since 2004.

The article is pretty bad, but I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss the issue. If you work out the numbers, it's still an alarming problem.

I think that the article should do the math for the audience to better report on the problem though. Five minutes of following links looks like the Salon article is a summary of the Huffington Post article, which is a summary of the original report by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB).

In light of these predictions, I am more curious as to how governments will address this problem. I find it difficult that governments will easily give up on their surveillance goals.

The question then becomes how will they work around the shifting generational trend that Charlie has identified? For example, will they leverage new analytical technology that enables them to employ a smaller number of people by automating tasks?

For those of you who have read his Laundry Files novels, the SCORPION STARE network grants panopticon surveillance combined with lethal line-of-sight gorgonism emulation, which hypothetically enables automated control of a wide network of remote controlled camera weaponry to a few pilots instead of employing large numbers of people with guns.

Maybe Charlie has predictions as to how governments will automate their surveillance systems or other new ways of maintaining their control in their supposed mission to protect the people in the face of less loyal prospective workers?

The drive of the hacker is to solve problems and find novel or efficient solutions to problems and the tools used to solve those problems.

It's not surprising that this can be taken to the extreme as we strive to continually optimize our tools, which are especially flexible since they are spun out of almost pure abstraction.

A healthy dose of perspective is helpful to reminds us that at the end of the day we solve problems and make cool things.

Though dealing with poorly designed man-made abstractions can be frustrating, we are fortunate to have the opportunity to improve our tools and environments and it's especially incredible how collaborative the effort is (open source) compared to some other industries.

Being a first-time bootstrapper, I am striving very hard to minimize financial exposure. However, this means that I had to convince my cofounders and team to work for free; or rather, they agreed to join because they believe in the vision and for the learning experience and journey rather than for immediate monetary compensation.

Although they admittedly joined on happily and believe in our potential, I do struggle with doubt and accountability to them. The article seems to emphasize the mental strain caused by blows to self confidence or finances, which can certainly be crippling and terrifying.

However, by minimizing financial exposure and trying to keep a perspective that protects self-confidence, those are less of a concern to me compared to facing the possibility of failing my friends who contributed their time freely and signed on to what was originally my vision.

The pressure and anxiety over prospect of disappointing the friends who became teammates based on their belief in you and your vision seems hard to avoid. To be blessed by forgiving loved ones, friends, and teammates is priceless and the articles recommendation to "Most important, make time for your loved ones...Don't let your business squeeze out your connections with human beings...When it comes to fighting off depression, relationships with friends and family can be powerful weapons." resonates the most.

I'm not sure that dynamic segregation of social connections is the ultimate solution to the mediocrity of social network applications. Or rather, most social network sites come to serve a specific purpose or narrow purpose rather than actually facilitate social interaction.

Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are just as the author describes, "a digital filing cabinet that you fill with your relationships." They have peripheral uses like being a channel for recruiters and being quoted on mass media, but fundamentally they store contact information.

A "digital filing cabinet" for storing slightly different sets of relationships seems like a tool with limited use, rather than a true virtualization or revolution of social interaction.

I would say that social networks or "social spaces/contexts" (maybe someone can coin a better term than me) that actually facilitate meaningfully novel kinds of social interaction, start relationships, and generate content are more along the lines of HN, reddit, IRC, and forums (online spaces where ideas are exchanged, discussions and learning occurs, and people connect to new people).

Others include Meetup.com, which focuses on connecting people with similar interests so they can interact in real life.

Surprisingly I am more social on Steam than any of the conventional social networking sites, Steam is a surprisingly effective social network for gamers. Additionally, social games like MMOs or other multiplayer games change the way people interact socially through guilds, alliances, clans, trading, competition, and cooperation.

Generalized social "filing cabinets" like FB, LI, and Twitter serve their purposes and being generalized, they have use for a large population of people, but they don't actually generate or enhance interesting new social dynamics or content (twitter sort of does). Friendships and relationships are difficult to cultivate without specified context. A "filing cabinet" has little context for interaction, but a "social space" can provide context for new interaction and that's where more interesting stuff happens.

How ironic.

I would say that labeling someone who posted factual evidence that M-66 explosives are in fact legal and relatively ordinary recreational fireworks as an "outrage tourist" is a beautiful example of character assassination. Far more so than merely alluding to the title of a self-identified media correspondent who goes on to make a defense that the photos are public and that law enforcement can access them, while de-emphasizing/distracting from the fact that neither google searches for pressure cookers nor facebook photos of fireworks merit a law enforcement visit. Verbatim from declan's G+ post "Having curious local cops ask you questions about your public photos of explosives is not [a big story]."

If one or the other is potentially happening, then there is a cause for concern that at least justifies a personal article on medium by Catalano. Had law enforcement actually revealed to Catalano, that hey, we're visiting you because you posted fireworks on your facebook, then she probably wouldn't have written that article. However, being investigated in a Kafkaesque manner, where you have little idea what your original crime could have been since you are a law-abiding citizen (searching for pressure cookers or posting fireworks photos on facebook is pretty innocuous behavior) might lead to legitimate speculation on the methods of law enforcement.

EDIT: None of this is to say that mass media isn't overly eager to report stories without enough support, and kudos to declan's investigative skills and intent, but I do think that drawing conclusions based on contrarianism and real character assassination of someone who added legitimate facts to the discussion isn't very productive.

First: On your assertion that federal government agencies (or agencies that work in tandem with them) act in line with mathematical probability like the base rate theorem and that they necessarily allocate resources in a cost-effective manner.

Has a federal agency ever been funded to the tune of 8 billion dollars a year, infringed on individual freedoms, harassed innocent civilians, all of which are tangible wastes and violations while based on a premise that also completely ignores the base rate theorem? Has such an agency been scrapped even though they have failed to negate the base rate theorem after billions of resources invested and negative collateral effects?

Second: On your point that revealing their methods in this case "burns a source" How is this burning a source?

1. As others have provided citations for, the FBI has already revealed that they surveil communications.

2. One would assume that competent terrorists are not in complete ignorance of the possibility that the FBI utilizes a domestic surveillance system. Thus, the "secret source" does not really provide the element of surprise.

3. If by burning you mean revealing to the masses and compromising public opinion, the federal government of the US has already shown that they believe in the checks and balances of their system (such as warrants, blanket or otherwise) and this is one of their major defenses of these practices. If they wholeheartedly believe that the system is legal (as they have demonstrated), then they would not feel the need to hide this kind of investigation.

Regardless of whether the story is true or not (I haven't made up my mind on this yet), I don't think the arguments you give for discrediting the story seem as strong as you present them.

In fact, why wouldn't improving education help with the claim that people are inherently lazy. I don't understand the objectivist assumption that there are huge numbers of lazy people who will always leech off of others. Instead of assuming that schools would be closed because they wouldn't need to be open to educate people, and that those people aren't worth it anyway, why not educate people and develop their curiosity, motivation, and empathy for others. It is those qualities that most people learn and then cultivate intrinsic motivation into passion to pursue goals that are not purely financial.

Helping people, building something great, improving the world are goals that can and are being taught in schools now. Unfortunately, the state of education is far from perfect. It seems feasible to correlate the laziness that is so feared by opponents of BI with a flawed education system. It is difficult to believe that better education cannot improve the intellectual curiosity and motivation of the supposedly "lazy." A flawed education system produces ignorance, laziness, and stifles intellectual appetite.

Instead of falling back on fundamental attribution error to assume there's something inherently wrong with the "lazy" person, maybe realize that without proper education and being shown opportunities and paths for contribution, people will certainly seem lazy. Not to say that university admissions are a perfect filter for people who are willing and capable of working hard, but even at top tier universities in the U.S., "Undecided" is a common major among students. Students who have a high school degree and have made it into selective schools, demonstrated at least some ability to work, but still don't necessarily know where to contribute.

Without data, but anecdotally I hear of many relatively wealthy middle-aged people who could retire comfortably, but don't, or they pursue a different productive interest (like teaching or volunteer work) after switching from their previous career. It seems reasonable that a better education system would go far to encourage people to better themselves and the world even in a BI scenario. It is hard to imagine someone who has learned curiosity, intrinsic motivation to contribute something, and empathy for others would sit around and leech from others all day.

I am working on this problem. Feel free to contact me; my email is in my profile if you are interested in talking about it.

One perspective on the current debate over whether governments should spy on other countries seems very similar to arms race issues.

However, instead of debating whether nuclear weapons should be decommissioned in the canonical example of an arms race, the debate is trending toward whether more subtle, and arguably more powerful infoweapons and "cyberwarfare" should be allowed on an international scale. Especially when it can be used to enforce oppressive, Orwellian, Kafkaesque regimes maybe not now, but sometime in the future. Unfortunately, I am not sure that the general populations of the world are as cognizant of the implications of powerful information apparatuses as they should be.

A legitimate question seems to be, would you rather have a stockpile of nuclear weapons that you cannot use due to the their blatant destructive power and the threat of mutually assured destruction, or would you rather have secret global panopticon surveillance backed by increasing powerful analytics technologies to sift through the firehose of information?

Why rely on nukes when you can do so much more with greater degrees of omniscience? Quash domestic and foreign threats alike before they even emerge with targeted action founded on near full informational awareness.

Serious answer: If your goal is that important to you, it's really a personal issue you will need to work out with yourself and your wife. I think that no book will be able to uniquely address your personal relationship.

Additionally, I am not certain that it is necessary to "eat junk food, sit at the PC all day, sleep on the couch" in order to build a business or change the world. Although it is romantic and might be doable for some people over the course of months and years, sacrificing (subjective) quality of life and sanity should not be the only path to building something meaningful that you care about. It will probably take a lot over work over the long haul. If the console cowboy lifestyle changes are the aspects of creating something that you/your wife are worried about, maybe address those separately from the goal of actually creating something, which I hope would not necessitate those behaviors.

A number of initial responses to this article seem to acquiesce to the program because it scans technically "public" information. Speaking from the context of the United States, the 4th Amendment to the Constitution is what may be violated by PRISM, which protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure. It has been interpreted by the courts that this protects citizens when they have a "reasonable expectation of privacy."

At what point with the powerful sensor technologies and analytics techniques that government agencies can employ and are mentioned in the article (semantic analysis, horizon scanning, predictive analytics, facial recognition, geolocation) do we draw a line that a reasonable expectation of privacy has been violated? I am not sure that the users of social networks who are not tech industry workers necessarily expect the extent to which extrapolations can be made and conclusions can be drawn about behavior that is technically "public" and mundane at face value.

Another separate question to consider is whether agencies will distinguish between content that is "public" or "private" in the cloud. It may be reasonable that content put in the cloud publicly is searchable, but will agencies respect cloud providers/users administrative privacy options? If I put physical property in storage I expect a warrant will be required to search it, but if I put intellectual property in the cloud, will the government respect that as protected by the 4th amendment when it is much easier to obtain, especially with the cooperation of tech companies?

I had no idea about this issue, thanks for the link! Looks like the FISC overruled the executive branch's argument about classifying the ruling. Kudos to the EFF.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/public-first-secret-co...

Honestly, what does the executive branch hope to accomplish by classifying the ruling that it was illegal? It sounds like everyone already knows what the ruling was even if the documents themselves are classified. Seems like a weak measure that makes them look worse, that they are willing to exercise the power to hide things (a power one would hope would be used responsibly) even in cases where it doesn't seem to help their goals in a meaningful way? Am I missing something here?