twmb's comments

Taxes are not very high in the US. We have about 26.9% total tax revenue (which I will abbreviate TTR. TTR is measured as a percentage of GDP)[0][1]. I hate seeing this statement thrown out as if it is fact. We have very low taxes comparatively, especially given our status as a highly developed and competitive economy.

We are #7 on the Global Competitive Index, behind Switzerland (29.4% TTR), Singapore (14.2% TTR), Finland (43.6% TTR), Sweden (47.9% TTR), Netherlands (39.8% TTR), and Germany (40.6% TTR) [3].

Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland and other countries that are close below the US have socialist governments. As much as hip, intellectual go-getters who read Ayn Rand would love there to be no government, it's simply not feasible. It may be great in theory, but it's not great in practice. However, I do not know much about the Ayn Rand's entire philosophy, so I wont comment on it further. I do know that most people who blindly latch on to some of her ideas don't truly understand her philosophy.

Half of that 'regulatory capture' you refer to is because of private interests lobbying for government restrictions. The will of the free market may drive such anti-competitive practices by private interests out of business eventually, but humans do not operate on the long term.

Regardless, the point of this post is that even if you thought you opened up your eyes before to the realities of the world and exactly how it should work, I invite you to take a step back every now and then and reevaluate your philosophies.

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenu... [1]http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/numb... [3]http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GlobalCompetitivenessReport...

I cannot agree more. I was going to respond to the post that the best thing that can happen is being told that you can do all of that.

Once you realize that you can investigate whatever you want, the world opens up for exploration.

No, please. I have many issues with this, coming from the applicant's perspective.

He could have taken his masters program as his full time hobby. There is a reason he went to masters. He loved what he was studying. It only makes sense for all projects for him to work on are ones that are for the masters program. caveat: I believe this holds more-so for Ph.D. people than masters, as masters is still half class based. However, masters students have research projects that take up the other half of their time.

Or, he could have had consistently heavy course loads. The reason that many famous entrepreneurs drop out is because they do not have enough time to do both school and their amazing side project (note, their one amazing side project). This is rare.

Have you considered that >90% of CS graduates are not going to be superstar programmers? At my University, I do not know of any other students doing their own side projects, outside of research projects with professors (this isn't to say I'm the only one, but given what I know, I'd be willing to bet there are fewer than 5 doing something cool).

One of my master theories is that I do need an online presence codewise and blogwise to demonstrate my competence and my passion for building cool stuff. However, to start building projects on GitHub or fixing bugs, you need a pretty descent level of competence. Universities such as mine first immerse you in Java, teach some theoretical CS (algorithms, ...), then have a class on various programming languages then have the upper division courses on C or C++. If you notice, most super cool open source projects these days revolve around C++ at a level that we don't learn, JavaScript, a language that is booming on popularity now but is only touched on in Universities, and Python, which is used in some Universities (those fortunate people) instead of Java. I doubt JavaScript will be seriously taught in Universities for many years. Maybe the Ivy's will have it down, but not everybody goes there. From this we can draw the conclusion that most students wont have the competence to commit to open source projects unless they go off and seriously learn on their own time. Students like that may only build simple projects for themselves and not put it up for show (it's so simple, surely somebody has better functionality somewhere, right?). Why blog? Students like that have nothing profound to talk about.

One of my issues with the frequenters of hacker news is that every programmer expects everybody else to be at least as competent as they are. Not everybody has as high of a drive to code nonstop. I don't. After classes, after oodles of homework and self-teaching the 90% they didn't teach me in class, I want to read books. I enjoy reading. I enjoy hanging out with my friends.

I, unlike most of my fellow students, have realized that dream jobs have ridiculous expectations. I can see why, too: if everybody wants the job, and they are doing something legitimately cool, then it's only reasonable they should have the pick of the litter. However, is your job a dream job? I hate seeing every single application say "two years of experience required" or five. I've been fortunate enough to get internships for the past two summers. Is every graduate expected to take some bullshit big biz job for 2 years, learning very little and becoming embittered by the industry? This is worthless. Some enjoy it, I don't. It'd be better for small companies to take on a promising looking graduate at a slightly less pay and have them expand their knowledge at the company.

Yes, I deserve your job. I'm more than competent enough for it. If I don't have the knowledge you need now, I would be able to learn it in depth within two weeks (give me the full days to learn it). I love what I'm doing, but I love other things too. Having other hobbies besides coding is healthy. Just because you know all the current buzzwords (node, django, backbone, Go, ?) does not mean you are a better coder and does not mean another person without this knowledge is worthless.

I'm wondering if partnering with Netflix and taking the potential flak from TV would be worth it. I don't see the reason for HBO to have HBO Go other than the tie in with TV companies.

Would it be more profitable to pair up with Netflix or to sell their shows drm free easily online? I know I'd pay for that service in a heartbeat, and I wonder how many people who own cable (I don't) would switch to paying for the few channels they actually want. However, I don't want to buy cable for one or two channels / shows, so they lose out from all money I'd willingly give them. I don't want them to cancel an amazing show because of the perceived lack of profit (Spartacus) if they could in fact double their profit from people who would buy their shows directly.

My mistake, has jules pointed out below I was confusing the EU parliament for the European member states.

Actually most of the EU democracy processes are easy to understand. I'd like to see a European comment on the efficacy of their process. Most follow a proportional system, some follow a mix of proportional and single member single district (winner take all), and Great Britain is winner take all.

They also have much more party discipline. Somebody voting for a party knows the type of policies that party will enforce, and if people are not crazy for the policies being passed, the vote in a different party in the next election.

Also, I would argue that lobbying is more prevalent in the US. Low party discipline + the much greater "need" for money = more money influence.

They keep track of how many pages you've read in cookies. Delete your cookies. No reason for brash hostility.

The problem is when they don't use this to track drug networks and murder crimes and instead use it to lock up peaceful Occupy Wall Street protesters, or other political dissidents.

It appears to me that They're opening up their economy more to western influences, but they're trying to maintain control of their own party and keep everybody in line, similar to what Putin has done in Russia.

My theory is that as they open up more economically, the citizens will be "enlightened", so to speak, and there will be more protests. If China officials know this, they may be trying to stop this enlightenment before they're put out of power.

I disagree to a certain extent. I don't believe in catering to the possible 5% [1] market share that will not upgrade their browsers. Anything that strongly suggests people to upgrade is better, imo. I don't care for the entire notion of including everybody when it calls for more code bloat and makes the code more difficult to maintain or upgrade.

[1] http://theie7countdown.com/

I wonder if it's a planet such that the surrounding stars' lights prevent any other starlight from being seen, except for once every few thousand years.

One could only imagine a civilization that lives here and what would happen to society whenever the full night sky is occasionally seen...

Clearly, you didn't even look at the article yesterday, nor any of the comments nor any of the replies to your run and gun comment. That 90 item list was near universally praised.

There are times when people need to expand their attention to read more than a page of writing.

Not everything can be explained so succinctly. Books exist for a reason.

I agree that people need to to be able to explain their companies and what they do in one paragraph - at a high level. But that is a skill that is easily honed by an afternoon of thought... no need to be so dismissive.

How is that a theft at all?

You know the part and can replicate its look... why not?

You wouldn't steal a cake, so why would you bake it?

I just have to comment that in his page, I disagree on using dual n back as a measure of mental ability. As the mind repeats a task over and over it learns what to expect.

I personally view n-back as any other repetitive task, only it is mostly in the mind; the more you whittle, the better you will be at whittling.

If you look at the wikipedia page [1] you will see that there have been papers both for and against n-back improving cognitive ability.

The way I propose to test effectiveness would be to have a bunch of subjects all try to learn a difficult task that is unfamiliar to them. Those with the placebo supposedly would not be able to learn it as quickly or understand it as well. The large sample size would account for statistical inaccuracies and differences among people's abilities.

I personally took nootropics this last winter for three months. My theory is that people who claim improvement are looking for improvement, and notice more just how good they are at tasks... I took piracetam, choline, aniracetam, and oxiracetam (and a tiny sample of pramiracetam, the supposed best, for free), and noticed nothing the entire time. Originally I thought I noticed improvement, but only realized I was looking for improvement in every task I did, which made me notice everything I did. After this realization I didn't notice anything at all, for the rest of my supplies. I learned more than just their ineffectiveness during this self experiment...

EDIT: I will revise my statement to add that I do not think that *racetams are completely ineffective. I do believe that they are relatively useless on healthy individuals without any disorders, though. Most of the studies in the wikipedia page are on people with disorders, and I do remember reading before that their benefits on people without problems is disputed.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back

I don't know why everybody claims that the iPhone has the "perfect" screen size[1]. I have never had a problem with any android phone size... they are larger, but nobody ever considers they aren't just larger for larger's sake.

I appreciate the larger screen, not only for the extra space on the keyboard but because I like the extra display. My pockets aren't miniature. They can fit a slightly larger phone. Sitting down with any phone in my pocket is uncomfortable, so I always take my phone out of my pocket. Screen size for pocket size is not an issue.

My thumb is not tiny, and can reach across an extra inch. I don't know how far away the guy in the linked article holds his thumb, but I have always been able to reach across every android I have come across, without a problem. The -times I notice that I cannot reach across don't matter because most apps that are designed well don't put tiny buttons on the side of the screen.

I would enjoy a larger android with the iPhone retina resolution more than an iPhone with the retina resolution.

[1]http://www.iphonehacks.com/2011/10/iphone-4s-no-4-inch-scree...

Presumably, what you have to do isn't as important nor as time demanding as what the president has to do.

They're obvious features now because we can actually use two objects (our fingers) to interact with the screen at once. Pinch to zoom wasn't at all obvious when everything only could be touched once (PDA's) or not touched at all.

It seems only obvious to pinch to zoom something, but we could not have done that until a full touch interface.

I am currently using a Lenovo T60p... a laptop from 2005. Lenovo is known to be a reliable business laptop.

This has been posted by andygeers 5 days ago.

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