masterponomo's comments

Ask: Which areas of comp-sci study are engineering disciplines and which are sociological/political? For extra credit: which are both? I think you will get a boatload of anecdotal grievance, though that's not saying much nowadays.

They also need to start over on all that wiring behind Dr Hinton in the photo.

The author has either not read "Nickeled and Dimed" or else has read it and summarized it in this article. I truly hope she is not simply plagiarizing the book. As for the title, it reminds me of the attitude displayed by callers to the Dave Ramsey show. They would rather flood you with anecdotes justifying their condition than listen to a word of advice. Having been poor myself, and having emerged from it through my own learning and through following the advice and example of people who were not poor, I would urge anyone who is poor to know the things in this article but to also listen to any well-meaning advice and see if any part of it, taken as is or modified to suit your situation, can help at all. You are most likely to get out of poverty in increments, so don't hermetically seal your mind inside a bubble of justification and victimization.

Beat you to it:-)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3085082

If you watch comment sections where shareholders hang out, such as Yahoo Business site for FB, you see every negative allegation against FB ever published, every single day. In comments sections, it is typically the shorts railing against any uptick in share price. And while the main Yahoo Business site does publish both pro and con articles year-round, there does always seem to be one major "new" negative allegation right at earnings time (Q1 report is in two days), like clockwork. Often, the "new" thing is not new at all. The major themes they like to repackage as news at earnings time are 1) the young are fleeing FB; 2) FB's revenue growth will slow as user growth slows; and 3) FB uses their data to sell ads. It's really funny to see these things touted as new revelations, when FB openly discusses all of these and more when discussing risk factors in their own financial reporting.

Plasturds(tm)

You could do that easily with a 3D printer using an edible medium on bread with a sturdy crust layer. SnackChat?

I'm a casual runner, but I am engaged in a secret athletic struggle against my nemesis, a guy in my age group (55-59) who routinely finishes about 5 minutes ahead of me in local 5K races. It's a secret struggle because I'm not on even on his radar...but HE is on MINE. Believe me, if someone cheated and put yet another spot in the rankings between me and Nemesis, he would be stealing something important from me.

I attended a Clipper user group in Atlanta in the mid 1990's, with my dad. He was into Clipper, was trying to get me interested. The Clipper folks were also into Turbo Pascal. A Borland rep was there to give out swag and talk up the imminent release of Borland Delphi. The Clipper crowd was divided--some excited, some not so much. The older guys, like my dad, had come up programming with punched cards and tape drives. For them, a PC with Clipper and Turbo Pascal was plenty advanced enough for small business apps. Dad never did go for Delphi. 20+ years later, I'm doing a quick study of Object Pascal to prep for working on a legacy application at my work, in Delphi.

My point was about the selective enforcement of a requirement, not about the merits of government-issued ID. But it's fair to discuss all aspects of my comment. You are absolutely right that having a government-issued ID and providing it upon demand of government agencies aids the efficient operation of the government. It also is indispensable for efficient government tracking and control of individuals. You might even paraphrase all that as "it helps the trains run on time." Look up that phrase if you are interested in the difference between individual freedom and government efficiency/convenience. I was only annoyed by the more strict requirements for citizens vs non-citizens. Perhaps you missed one of my points (the show-us-your-papers thing) about how it is considered a violation of civil rights for the police to simply request your ID (your papers) without probably cause. How nice for illegal aliens. And to your point about how glad immigrants would be to have SSNs, I question that. The current largest dispute around voting rights is whether requiring a government-issued ID in order to vote is a violation of civil rights. The largest outcry against voter ID requirements comes from the black community and from illegal immigrant rights organizations. Now, why shouldn't they gladly show that ID in order to exercise the right to vote, just as I duly registered and identified my children to receive their rightful education? We are back to the issue of selective enforcement, and selective outrage over this or that brand or degree of selective enforcement. ID for white kids to go to kindergarten? That's good! ID for non-whites and illegals to vote? That's bad! Strict entry requirements for almost every country on Earth? That's good! A pause and reexamination of historically lax US entry requirements? That's bad!

No. I am asking those hysterical about recent events to tell me why one form of selective enforcement is accepted as a matter of course, while another is not. I am using this example to show that selective enforcement of laws is not automatically hatred/bigotry/racism, but may be a matter of different policy goals. BTW, aliens can get ITIN's which are similar to SSN's except they are used only for tax matters. That is another abuse of citizens, if you care to be rigorous. Citizens are required to obtain a number and to supply it as a condition of receiving a benefit. In effect, the dreaded "show me your papers" which is posited as an abuse of power if used against a suspected illegal alien standing on the street is an entry requirement for a born citizen to walk through the door of kindergarten--but not for any non-citizen.

In the 1990's in Gwinnett County, GA, you could not enroll your child in school unless he/she had a Social Security number. Non-citizens (including illegal aliens) were exempt from this rule. I considered declaring my children non-citizens as a minor protest, but really didn't care to make an issue of it. Would today's hysterics classify that 1990's policy as hatred, bigotry, and racism agains the (then) largely white, legal citizens of the county? Or would it simply be selective enforcement of the law? The fact is, the executive branch always practices selective enforcement, and the range of emphasis on some policies can vary wildly from one administration to another, and seemingly arbitrary exceptions can be made. In my opinion, Trump is delivering the revised emphasis on immigration that he promised during the campaign, and so far is doing so entirely within the law. People are free to react as they will, but I do hope they learn to recognize selective enforcement in all its glory, as a concept separate and distinct from the over-emotional labels now being applied to it.

Kapow!

Clearly, the PIVOT point is the key.

I can see where natural selection would lead to separation of the blowhole from the mouth. I'll bet proto-whales without that adaptation had frequent clogging of the blowhole with food from within. This would not only block the airway, but blowing the food out (if they could manage it before blacking out and sinking) would deprive them of nourishment.

I understand, and I know HN has the right to control speech in the forum it owns. So I will only write this in the thread where I have been invited to write it (and will note that I am a Libertarian so I of course did not vote for Trump): The major theme of the media and in many comment threads on many sites has been to decry the totalitarian, authoritarian nature of the coming Trump regime. I find it ironic that the response of HN is to implement thought control by suppressing an entire genre of thought. After all, once you rise above the level of bits and bytes, you are going to get into political speech. But go ahead. It's a free country. Just not a free forum (here, that is).

You are right. I saw "branch of baleen family" and was blinded by my own joke w/o reading the whole paragraph. I wonder if the suck-feeding method contributed to the evolution of the blowhole? Perhaps it originated as a release valve so they could breathe out without blowing their freshly-sucked-in meal right back out their mouth?

I'm disappointed they went with "Alfred" and didn't try the more descriptive Baleeny McBaleenyface.

Sam Altman has already stated what Peter is allowed to say (and presumably think) as a condition of his continued association with YC. There was a recent spate of articles by and about Sam Altman, including a probing interview by his brother (presumably in lieu of a blatantly self-serving monologue by the subject). So we kind of know Sam's viewpoint and his tendency toward defining who can say and do what at YC and on HN. I would call that shameful in a public commons, but this is a private enterprise, and Sam is free to set the boundaries in Sam's world.

Looks like Mr. Thiel will have to content himself with being inclusive on his own, or at least not as part of Ms. Pao's exclusionary inclusion organization. Her post made me think of a quote about "all right-thinking people" that I remembered incorrectly as something from (serious) political science, but it turned out to be from Monty Python. Thus discredited, I will not include it here, but will exclude it. Edit: Oh wait, I see that Orwell had a good statement about right-thinking orthodoxy, and Monty Python did an excellent parody of it. http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/499753-at-any-given-moment-t... http://www.montypython.net/scripts/right-think.php