Boo hoo, the multi-millionaires are getting insulted when they try to fuck their users!
Won't someone please think of the feelings of the millionaires!
I'm pretty sure they can wipe away their tears with $100 bills and their feelings won't suffer permanent damage. Since their feelings are so much more important than all of the people they are trying to fuck over.
Are you an adult? These are your peers not billionaire bankers leeching off the backs of the poor. You know, programmers, marketers, entrepreneurs. They made it. And you want to tear them down because they've been successful? Now that they have money they are automagically evil? What planet am I on?
That CEO is Kevin Systrom, my peer because he is a programmer and entrepreneur. Your whole argument is baseless. He wrote Instagram with his partner Mike Krieger.
Who made the call to fuck the users? Whoever it was, fuck that guy.
Instagram is a company. The leaders are responsible for that unethical behavior and I'm not going to excuse them out of some bullshit appeal to programmer loyalty.
The fact that these are peers is MORE reason for us to be calling them out. Do you really want your profession to be associated with this sleazy behavior? They are poisoning the well for all of us.
Tech people today have the power and money to reshape the entire world. Yet so many of them are focused on extracting a few dollars through grossly unethical behavior. This is not praiseworthy behavior in any sense and you should be ashamed of yourself for defending it.
If my peers are going to be as sleazy and ethically bankrupt as, say, politicians or wall street bankers then I don't want them as peers. I would gladly throw them under the bus to protect the reputation of all tech people.
Inspired, not directly modeled, I think. Dr. Strangelove was in part based on Edward Teller. Unlike von Neumann, Teller actually a bit bonkers in many ways; he was a deeply jealous and vindictive person who was directly responsible for destroying the career (and likely shortening the life of) J. Robert Oppenheimer, and he tried to convince people that Stanislaw Ulam did not contribute to the Manhattan Project. Teller wanted to use hydrogen bombs to dig deep-water harbours, and to extract oil by blowing up underground oil deposits with nuclear weapons, and lobbied to create what became known as Reagan's failed "Star Wars" project. He also tried to get the US to build a network of underground shelters similar to the scenario that Dr. Strangelove outlines at the end of the film.
1. Von Neumann was biggest proponent of first strike
2. Was in a wheelchair
3. Wanted to create a doomsday machine that would destroy the worlds crops with intentional global warming. By destroying Russia's crops USA would end up ahead by better agricultural tech
4. Time magazine and others have acknowledged that it was directly based on Von Neumann.
Also Von neumann was way more important. He was easily the most important intellectual of his time. Without him there might have been no nuke at all--it was his design that finally suceeded.
Perhaps partially, but John von Neumann was Jewish and left Europe for America before WWII, while Dr Strangelove is a former Nazi... the references to Operation Paperclip seem clear.
Wouldn't it make sense that the NSA owns a few Certificate Authorities and gets access that way? They try to have backdoors installed for them everywhere according to that whistleblower.
There is no reason to force yourself to one solution.
I have access to this setup, but also to multiple laptops, desktops, tablets, phones. I use what works for the situation.
When does the ipad+keyboard shine?
When you don't have easy access to wifi, but can get 3g.
When you don't have power. iPad battery life is awesome.
When you want to have a tablet with you for reading, drawing, notating.
When you want your keyboard to be detached from your screen to have a more comfortable position. (e.g. you can put the keyboard on your lap, or even offset the screen while having the keyboard in front of you. Many possible configurations)
When you want the above features, but don't want to have to carry a backpack or some kind of bulky bag to fit a laptop or convertible laptop+tablet or carry around a few different devices.
The iPad is a very general purpose device. A lot of people are saying, "Just use a laptop" and completely missing the point. The author is specifically using this setup for 3g+battery life.
Like everything Ayn Rand, that's completely upside down, since government is also the only entity that has ever succeeded in guaranteeing people's rights.
So government is the best friend of man's rights, while libertarianism is the biggest enemy. Libertarianism = corporate feudalism.
It's funny how quickly people forget. There is one inevitable end result of such severe disproportionate concentrations of wealth. I'm sure we're nowhere near that point yet, but those who argue against redistribution are guaranteeing we will get there at some point.
I take you to mean that people forget that this is the inevitable outcome, but is there proof of that? China and ancient egypt for extremely stable examples of societies with hugely disproproriate distribution of wealth. Is it possible that revolutionary France and Russia are the outliers of history?
Look, before PG rightfully jumps in here like the SkiFree Yeti and tells us both to knock it off, let's see if we can squash this:
http://xkcd.com/667/
I'll concede that my last comment was inappropriate (it's super-basic Python, not a proof).
Can you at least concede that loose talk of beheading capitalists is, at the very least, counter-productive to what we should all want, which is a robust recovery?
Are you really advocating that people like PG and Elon Musk should be murdered without due process for being successful?
If not, why say so? Even solely as a rhetorical device, it's extremely distasteful, polarizing, and makes a rational person discount anything else you might have to say on the matter.
Or maybe you and people like you have no intention of really following through with these threats - they're just attempts to bully political opponents into adopting your tax policies. So, we're just talking soft-extortion here, not outright plans of murder and violence.
How about "evil" financiers like Warren Buffett (or is he "one of the good ones"?), or the other bankers and financiers - many of whom heavily donated to Obama, some of whom even served in his administration. Should the chopping block be reserved just for them? Do they get a pass if they donated to the right political parties and organizations?
This extreme demonization of capitalism is really troubling to me, and I think it helps explain the sluggishness of the economic recovery. The holders of capital are a bit spooked, and rightfully so.
Uh huh. The name of your method was "proof". I've been on HN for four years and you think I don't know how to read and write python? I'm a lisp hacker who came to this place back when it was about lisp hacking for hackers. Now, right wing business douches like you come along spouting talking points straight out of the corporate PR department.
First of all, I did not threaten anyone with the guillotine. The simple fact of the matter is that if the wealthy keep spouting bullshit designed to fuck the poor (which is all that your kind of speech is) then they are going to get guillotined. Don't think the reincarnation of Robespierre is not chomping at the bit to chop your neck.
Naturally, I have no interest in killing pg or myself or any other rich people. However, I have an interest in the survival and success of the human species.
These CEOs that you cite should be afraid. Their poor hearts are chilled at the possibility of a tax raise on their 14% tax burdens. Boo hoo! I am making the point that a tax raise on a billionaire is warm and balmy next to the ice cold steel that you get on the chopping block.
If these CEOs, the richest in all of history, keep acting like idiots they are going to get us all killed. And we'll deserve it. Fuck us if we are so myopic and pathetic that we can't create a rational vision of a human future to build and instead surrender all our autonomy to some metaphysical libertarian nonsense that is widely ridiculed by Nobel Prize winning economists.
In conclusion, welcome to HN. There are a lot more people here than just corporate blowhards and their nerd-slaves. Hacker culture still has some blood in its veins.
This post written in Vim on Ubuntu (not that I'm a fan of Ubuntu or anything. But apt sure is nice!).
Okay, thank you for confirming that there is no reasoning with you forensic. I'll save PG the trouble of yelling at us and end my part in this here.
Also, just to clarify, I've been an independent freelance programmer/serial entrepreneur for over 10 years - I've never worked for or held an interest in a big corporation, and my bank account balance looks a lot more like an OWS member than a VC. I'm just not gullible enough to fall for this class warfare nonsense, or blame others for my success or lack thereof.
Tell you what: when OWS rounds you up, I'll have a talk with my fellow plebs and see if I can get you a pass.
If you don't recognize the high privilege of working as an entrepreneur in the first world for 10 years, you are just clueless. There are people starving to death because of the first world economic policy that you advocate, or at least that you perpetuate.
I'm not an Occupier. I advocate meritocracy. And meritocracy doesn't happen when you deny opportunity to the majority through economic policy that keeps the plutocracy entrenched.
Occupy is a great example of how sad the underclass is. Look at how pathetic they are. They are completely irrational and lost and have no idea what to even do. Of course, they're just sheep. But if the Goldman Sachs of the world keep growing the numbers of that herd (and all signs point to yes) then eventually there will be enough sheep for a Fuhrer to come along and point them at the enemy.
When I'm doing volunteer work, I'm working for the interest of the disadvantaged. My synagogue collectively works for the interest of the disadvantaged through their social action programs. My town's interfaith food bank is run very well and addresses a collective problem without taking a dime of government support.
Government plays a role in helping the disadvantaged but it doesn't play the only role, it's not necessarily the most effective role, and since it involves taking money from people involuntarily, we should make damn sure the help's truly necessary and there's not a better, voluntary way to do it first.
It's disingenuous to say you're working FOR the disadvantaged. They aren't directing your activity and they have no power in the matter.
Government actually responds to the desires of the disadvantaged so the difference is infinite.
Volunteer organizations only serve a very, very narrow sliver of the disadvantaged, and they usually don't work to eradicate the disadvantaged but rather to exploit them to perpetuate their institutions.
The customer of the volunteer organization is the donor or charitable person. They dictate the behaviour of the organization. The product is the disadvantaged person, who is used in sales pitches and so on to convince the customer to hand over their credit card information.
Just because the disadvantaged are used by private charities to extract donations from the wealthy doesn't mean that the volunteer organizations are working FOR the disadvantaged.
Simple fact of the matter is that working for the disadvantaged would include a lot more responsiveness, a lot more prevention, a lot more intelligence, a lot LESS volunteer work and a lot more professional work. (volunteer work is poverty tourism 99% of the time--the poor don't need people handing out soup at soup kitchens. They just need money to buy their own soup and a social system that gives them some opportunity to become self-sufficient.)
First, if government has been responding to the desires of the disadvantaged all along, it would seem that a good portion of the poor and disadvantaged want to stay poor and disadvantaged. I don't believe that's the case - so either the government hasn't been responding to the desires of the disadvantaged or the government has been rather ineffective at it.
Second, your description of a volunteer organization is so ridiculously counter to reality, I'm certain you've never spent time working for one. Here's how something like a county food bank actually works: civic organizations (mostly churches, but also groups like the Rotary and Lions Club) organize food drives and solicit donations. Grocery stores and restaurants donate food as well. Volunteers sort and bag groceries and man the food bank during pickup hours - anyone who wants the food gets the food. (Other volunteers drive food to elderly or disabled people who can't make it in.)
No one is paid, no one even has the ability to handle credit cards, and no disadvantaged people are paraded around in fundraising pitches. Donations of food mainly come from everyday people, and are widespread throughout the community. We serve a lot of people in our county, not a 'very, very narrow sliver'. You calling the work done by volunteers 'poverty tourism' is just you being an ass.
As for whether the food bank encompasses 'prevention' - no, it does not. There are plenty of other community organizations that do, though. The biggest and most effective are probably the marriage counseling and parenting classes provided by local churches to their members.
Perhaps, when I say something quite abstract, I'm MAKING A POINT instead of, you know, ignorant of very mundane facts like what you are blabbing.
God the literalism in the software industry is just pathetic. It's like all you ever read is technical documentation.
I'm imagining you reading Camus and then trying to educate him on the dictionary definition of "absurd"
"Excuse me sir, but let me educate you about this extremely fucking obvious fact that everyone already knows while I completely miss your point because I'm dense as lead"
Government is the only entity that works for the disadvantaged.
The Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Catholic school and hospital network (CRS), Doctors without Borders, Lutheran World Federation, the ACLU, etc etc etc.
The product of doctor's without borders is better health for the disadvantaged. The product of the red cross disaster relief is comfort and care in times of distress. The EAPN main goal is to elevate the disadvantaged above their current situation and prevent the cycle of poverty.
>it's fully understanding all the logical relationships, dependencies, performance characteristics, and edge cases of the desired features.
That IS programming. Don't confuse programming with typing. Programming means understanding a problem and coming up with a precise, logically valid solution.
So the upside is VERY VERY big. Well worth the risk.