bmm01's comments

There's no mutually assured destruction between the US and NK. The US can destroy NK, but NK cannot annihilate the US, even if it can severely damage many of its urban centers.

But making judges appointed rather than elected positions might.

Leaving aside the content and focusing only on style, can't we agree that the internet made journalistic writing so much more dull? What an engaging piece.

I'm not trying to speak as an authority on the subject, because I'm not. But perhaps it's you who has not properly contextualized the crime. And perhaps there's something wrong about the casualness with which you dismiss its uniqueness.

Completely disagree. Media companies are utterly dependent on Facebook and Google for revenue. If Twitter had succeeded in growing as Facebook did, Twitter would also be a platform that media companies believe they must be on. They couldn't afford not to be on Twitter.

In fact, with nearly 320 million users, media companies already believe they need to be on Twitter to reach their audiences. With a billion users, it would only be more true.

The TechCrunch article describes ZeniMax's allegations at more length: https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/01/jury-awards-zenimax-500-mi...

In many respects, Y Combinator, or really, start ups more broadly, seem uniquely ill equipped to solve this problem. Startups seem to be especially incompatible with the business challenges that face media companies right now. While perhaps the S curve of user growth could be attained by a media startup, the S curve of revenue isn't. And if it was, the quality of the journalism it produced would be terrible. Viral content is almost invariably superficial, frivolous and uninformative, or has an emotional quality very different from the impartial, sober thinking that we now need.

Americans have so many prejudices against publicly funded media. There's a widespread belief that if the government funds your media, its editorial perspective will reflect the government's interests. It's a completely misguided assumption in the case of, say, the CBC. The insulation from competition, and, therefore, not having to optimize content for sharing or views is necessary for producing quality, informative content. The New York Times seems to be holding onto at least a sliver of its integrity because it doesn't use such metrics, and instead is funded by subscriptions. But government funding could be valuable too (although there'd be hurdles).

That being said, the person who cracks the code for how to run a lucrative content/journalism business will make a lot of money.

That's a somewhat naive view. It presupposes that the current system is just, because (1) all members of society had an equal hand in shaping the current system, (2) that it was designed to serve the interests of society as a whole (rather than those who benefit most from it), and (3) that it would be easy to change the system if a consensus emerged among a majority (or even a vast majority) of society that such change was desirable. I disagree with all three presuppositions.

I disagree. When the AG points out that an executive action is morally or legally dubious, it reflects more on the actions of the president than on the AG.

In this case, government cannot be compared to a business, where a subordinate publicly questioning a superior's decision is indicative of unruly management, leaving the superior in a position where he/she needs to reassure the public that he's/she's in charge. Government doesn't work like that.

Nobody "needs" to get fired. From where would the need come?

Many are persecuted for other reasons too.

Wow, the chaos of the Trump administration has now fallen on Hacker News and heated political discussion has ensued. I didn't think there were ever discussions here about US foreign policy, except for how they relate to things with some connection to the industry. How curious!

If he's going to stop purchasing and using American good and cancel plans to come to America after the immigration policy was implemented, but not after Obama's targeted killings in Yemen and elsewhere, then clearly the former crossed a line while the latter didn't.

Great comment!

This is my first iOS app. I built it with React Native.

It allows users to post messages to a specific location (the location where the user is when they send their message). If another user comes to the location of the message, that user will receive a notification telling them they've discovered a message. It will then be added to the user's collection of messages, and the user will be able to read it. I've thought of the app as "Pokemon Go for messages".

Any thoughts? Constructive criticism? Planning to continue to work on it and add features to it.