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mgulaid's comments

mgulaid | 11 years ago | on: Why Inequality Matters

Economists don't consider philanthropy a strong factor in economic development or advancement. Philanthropy IMHO has never contributed significantly to lift millions of people out of poverty. Although Gates Foundation and similar NGOs are doing wonderful deeds in Africa and the USA, it will not have the same impact as tax structure/incentives, trade policy, labor laws, access to education, immigration laws, etc. Also how do you define philanthropy, the work of the Koch brothers can be considered philanthropic in some peoples' opinions. Philanthropy is personal and political exercise.

I think philanthropy is great, but only few people are doing it. And those who do it, don’t do it effectively, do it too late, or focus on the symptoms rather on the causes, which are much harder to deal with. Philanthropy has become an accessory or a career suffix for those have got lucky.

Gates talks about the middle class in China and else where is getting bigger. True, but philanthropic has little to do with this improvement. Aggressive and central economic management, and free trade policy with the US helped above mentioned countries to sustain a healthy middle income class in China, Mexico, Colombia.

mgulaid | 11 years ago | on: Snowden Documents Indicate NSA Has Breached Deutsche Telekom

Most likely, the hacked company in the video is Horizon Energy in the UAE. The first part of the IP matches of the UAE, and you can see the name horizon on the screen. after quick search you can see Horizon has energy operations in the ME and Africa.

mgulaid | 11 years ago | on: The Future According to Stanisław Lem

I think Solaristics is basically a metaphor for religion or God. How people would be able to communicate with God or a super-being if we get the chance to experience it directly. Solaris keeps cloning the psychic/memories of the visiting scientists. It can’t communicate with people, but it digs through memories to understand, what are the most important thing to each scientist. But this is freaking them out. Memories are the DNA of the individuality. Without memories people would like a bulb of collective consciousness, like Solaris itself. I think Tarkovsky avoided the religion subplot because the Soviet Union's restriction to discuss religoin. Highly recommended read or watch.

funny note: it seems no one reads posted articles on hacker news... people just talk about other stuff related to the topic of the article..

mgulaid | 11 years ago | on: How St. Louis County, Missouri Profits from Poverty

Reading this article reminded of the time, I used to go to community college, while doing a part time job and interning in downtown SF. In one semester I accumulate about $475 worth of parking and traffic fees. My schedule was too hectic that I could not afford to take public transportation and slow down. Being a working-person the United States is very stressful and undignified in some instances. You can't afford to make mistakes or get sick. In my case, I was lucky that the judge in SF granted me to do community services to pay off the majority of my fees.

Secondly, I am amazed why there are too many policing jurisdictions in each county. You have the City Police, County Police, Highway Patrol, local SWAT teams, and State Police, in addition to Federal and drug enforcement agencies. Too many inefficiencies and redundancies.

mgulaid | 12 years ago | on: Why Bitcoin Matters

But the bottom line argument is that when everyone gets paid in the same currency, the exchange fees go away. This can happen with US $ or Yan.

mgulaid | 12 years ago | on: Rap Genius is Back on Google

what does not make sense to me is that after removing all the back-linked urls, should not that drop Rap Genius's overall ranking even lower than before, since the artificial boosting has been removed. Why they are back on the top. googling "lyrics", RP is number #6 in the first page. I think RP has received special treatment here. Google search team needs to clarify this.

mgulaid | 12 years ago | on: Google Acquires Boston Dynamics

Holy shit.. this is huge.. This would give google huge advantage in robotics. What scare me that google is creeping into critical areas of modern life. And they usually dominate every field they enter.
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