borgia

I find it astonishing that what is basically a short message broadcast service can generate billions of dollars of revenue.

Basically a short message service? That's naive. Twitter is a marketing platform with 300m people signed up to receive marketing materials, people who also readily provide the platform with the details of what they like/would likely click on/spend money on, where they are in the world, what age they are, what gender they are and more. Of course it's extremely valuable.

people want to work, and to feel valuable.

Only because most others work and a person's value, or perceived value, is largely tied to them working, their work, etc.

The perceived value comes from essentially not relying on others to work to support you while you don't.

If machines were doing the work and trying to make additional money was optional I don't think the vast majority of people would be opting in. Indeed, it could even be seen as a negative trait if you're one of the few chasing money.

If you look at the tab title for the page, it's the same as the title of the article here.

I presume the in-article title has been changed since?

Some would call this hipster pretentiousness. I wouldn't though. I think overall we're seeing a growing trend, or growing condition I believe would be more apt, where people are searching for substance at a time where the digital/modern life has removed or cheapened it.

It isn't confined to products either.

Interestingly the title "Digital Refuseniks" actually appears as the title for the article if you check out the "Features and Analysis" list on the right hand side of the article's page.

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/Fv3cGSw.png

Realistically though they merely have to show them a search algorithm.

This is astonishingly stupid. It's also time to retire the word "troll", it has become so bastardized that its use shouldn't be taken at all seriously anymore.

Things appear to have become so weird that letting your kids out to play has now gained its own label - "Free range parenting".

Which is really sad. I grew up outdoors, climbing trees, riding my bike wherever I wanted, going to the local park or woods with other kids, etc. I would really hate to see kids being denied the same opportunities due to unwarranted fear being driven into their parents or their communities.

It's not something I've encountered in Europe, where I spent most of my life, kids seem to be living pretty much the same as ever there, but reading about this stuff happening in the US is very sad.

I've visited the US many times. You've little to fear as a visitor. There are a great many reasons to visit the USA.

With that being said, I haven't been back since the Snowden news broke and everything else that has followed. I'm not American, I can't vote there, I can't effect influence there, so my only way to protest the national and international actions of the USA is to not bring my tourist dollars there anymore.

Which is a shame because I've spent a lot of money on personal trips there, have enjoyed my times there, have met some really great people there, etc. but as it's my only form of protest that I can engage in, it's what I feel I have to do.

It is never too late to do something new.

Absolutely. Our individual lives aren't even a blip on the radar of life as a whole on our planet, let alone our universe. We get a very short amount of time to live, even shorter to live well (health, mobility, etc.). The idea of going to do something you dislike every day for 30-40 years of that very short time is just about the anti-thesis of what we should be doing with our time here.

I had absolutely no idea that there were previously such restrictions. Registering as an arms dealer to export an algorithm?! Astonishing.

Mastering something and merely learning competence in it are two different things though. I don't think the "Teach yourself X in Y" type books are claiming to be turning people into masters, similarly I'm sure many of the learning piano/sculpting/art type books aren't claiming to be making master artists out of their readers.

I think, with the right resources (people, material), if someone dedicated themselves to learning programming/software development actively for 2 years they could become extremely proficient in it. Not masters across a number of different languages and paradigms, of course, but just very proficient in a few of them to the point where they could churn out good work/projects/ideas with it.

The mindset may not be a millennial thing but its prominence in modern society most certainly is. Where once the hate-fueled rhetoric these kinds spew all day and night would have been written off as the delusions of a bitter lunatic, social media has given them a platform to find those similar to them, to network, to organise, etc. and those people tend to be within the millennial age group.

I think this movement will let off some steam and people will stop taking it seriously, but I don't think it is unfair to worry that they will take real positions of power in the future.

They're very highly active, and in control of, many student unions throughout say the US and UK. Student union reps often go on to become politicians, so it is indeed something worth worrying about.

Especially since their movement is based on dividing people and making one group the oppressor and the other the victim, even if such perceived oppression has no basis in reality.

Their movement has entirely turned against gay men now and blasts them as being "oppressive". They're almost as bad about FTM transsexuals. There's really no telling where it goes next. Most bizarrely though is the vast majority of the division is being carried out by largely straight, white, middle class or higher women at the helm.

This can lead to one side dominating the conversation despite being unpersuasive.

There is no conversation. They don't converse with those holding conflicting opinions. In fact, with Twitter, they've built out the BlockBot to automatically censor all and any deemed to have dissented against the narrative.

When you've a movement that is based on very flawed statistics and that places emphasis on hypersensitive feelings over reality, dissent containing reality or fact is a threat. It's far easier to censor the dissent than to engage it.

You can chill out. I'm not trying to recruit you.

Regardless of whether you did this intentionally or whether you just naively spouted this, it's a really shitty tactic to employ when conversing with people.

I don't feel safe discussing social-justice-related topics on accounts that can connect with my real-world persona

Isn't it amazing that this is a thing, and you're certainly not alone in feeling this way, and yet people can still support the movement that has you feeling this way?

On my few social media accounts, which are linked to me as a person, I'm more than happy to criticize the government(s), I'm more than happy to criticize the NSA, GCHQ, etc, I'm more than happy to criticize politicians and many other things but I'm sure as hell never going to voice my opinion on modern feminism/the social justice movement on these accounts.

This piece belongs on HN as much as any of the pieces that spring up and are flag killed about feminism i.e. it doesn't.

However, the fact that it is on HN and has received quite a bit of support let's me know I'm certainly not alone in my frustration with the modern social justice movement, their antics, and its creep into the "tech media".

It is an incredibly divisive, hate-fueled movement based on flawed, debunked statistics and what amounts to a game of oppression olympics. Where once the type of person to spout their hateful rhetoric would be simply ignored, through social media they have been enabled, given a voice to, and been able to form an echo-chamber with other similarly deluded, hate-fueled people.

Through their network they have wielded an undue amount of power and we have unfortunately witnessed the result of it in real life, as a man who landed a probe on a comet millions of miles away had his team's achievement pushed to the back in favour of the furor over the shirt he wore while doing so, and who then wept on TV as a result of the sheer level of hate he received.

We have seen GitHub shamed for its rug championing unity in meritocracy, who then quickly moved to throw the "problematic" rug into the trash amidst the furor from these online "feminists".

We saw two people lose their jobs and have their names ran into the ground online by these "feminists" over a bad joke at a tech convention.

And the list goes on.

They have become simply too large to ignore. Their presence, and their narrative, drives so many clicks that we now see the "tech media" latch onto it, give their toxic views air and promote their narrative in the name of gaining clicks.

Facts no longer matter when it comes to these people, only the narrative. It doesn't matter that Ellen Pao was proven to have no case against Kleiner Perkins and was exposed as an incredibly shady person while doing so, you wouldn't tell she lost as the media driving this narrative cherry picked that which was convenient to the narrative and brushed over everything which was not.

I could go on about this, but all I will say is that I'm glad to see backlash against this movement increasing. I'm glad to see more speaking out against it. I'm glad to see their hashtags on Twitter being used against them, and I'm extremely glad to see some of their champions like Sarah Noble being held accountable in real life for the hate they spew online.

The armchair historian and anthropologist in me wishes we had something like this for the corporations of the 1800s.

What we do have from this time though are a huge number of private journals written/kept by very powerful and influential people. We also have huge troves of their mail correspondence that, without a doubt, was intended to be kept private.

We have since made these things public, written books about them, published the letters reprinted, etc.

So perhaps the release of such correspondence is merely a function of the time since its authorship, or the time since the author (and recipient?) died. The way things operate today though, the future historians are unlikely to get such content.

I am still absolutely struggling to see a popular use case for these applications. I would be interested to read about how those who financed/invested in these products, Meerkat in particular, came to the conclusion that it was worth a punt.

The only time I heard Meerkat being mentioned was in the context of Periscope stepping into its place at launch time. The only time I've heard about Periscope being used since its launch was in reading about HBO shutting down those streaming GoT on it.

"If you build it, they will come" seems to have been morphed into "If you build it, hopefully they'll find a reason to use it" here.

a bump in pay will almost certainly help reduce costs associated with retention and retraining and may turn out to be a good business decision, not to mention the publicity.

I was thinking about this when reading the article myself. It has to help retention as it instantly becomes less desirable to move company if the market salary is far below what your current company is paying, which is what this will do.

For the time being it's great for all involved. The employees benefiting from it should be careful in terms of how they adjust their lifestyle based on the extra income though, because if the company went under or there were redundancies or similar they are almost assuredly going to experience a significant drop in their earnings.

I've personally been pretty irked by the whole "EVERYONE SHOULD LEARN TO CODE ASAP" narrative being pushed basically everywhere recently, but I agree with you here.

Sticking something like python onto the school curriculum would only be a good thing. The vast majority who do it won't become programmers, just as the vast majority who sit math don't become mathematicians, etc. but it would give kids a fun and interesting way to learn logic, create things on the computer for themselves, etc.

They have problems unique to them that they may be able to spin up little desktop apps or similar to solve, which could then go on to inspire them to become entrepreneurs, tech product creators, etc.

Regardless, there would be absolutely no harm in making it available to them.

Unless the person in question took the money and ran off to join a tribe in Africa or similar for the rest of their days, the point still stands.

Training in this industry is basically a lie told to children. It doesn't exist at startups and barely exists at corporates.

Should it really though? As developers/testers/whatever position we occupy in the tech space, most of us are pretty good at picking up new languages/technologies/frameworks/tools etc. in a pretty short amount of time.

Personally I think having well working teams with not only people of solid experience at the helm, but who have good communication skills and enjoy sharing knowledge, is far better in terms of developing juniors / new developers than simply sticking them on a few formalized training courses every year. Throw in collaborative 10%/20%/etc. time and you've a recipe for good development teams, in my opinion.

Now, when you're talking about transitioning from a development position into project/team management and above, there should be training/mentoring/etc. provided, but in terms of core tech skills I don't think formalized training is the way to go.

Not the person you're replying to but I'll answer anyway. The theory that the Charlie Hebdo attacks was a false flag attack was raised by Paul Craig Roberts of the Reagan administration.[1]

I find it a pretty incredible claim, but it's coming from a somewhat credible source regardless. Coupled with the fact that we do know false flag operations have been used and planned for use in the past, it's not hard to see why it's a theory given weight to.

[1]http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2...

Doesn't ship to Canada unfortunately.

I suppose it's only natural that people are resorting to these when huge swathes of the American youth are being prescribed Adderall and similar and gaining a competitive edge with them over those who don't have access to them.

I previously looked at sourcing modafinil but ultimately decided against it due the the sources available looking dodgy, a lack of clarity in the laws around it, etc. As more reputable companies emerge in the sector I think I may well end up giving the products a go.

My team snagged tickets to the web summit in Dublin last year, not to present but just as attendees. We actually had a great time at it, got to see some good talks, some not so good, and met a huge amount of really cool and interesting people at the eating/drinking events held afterward.

I can see how there would be a huge amount of opportunities there for startups. There is a vast amount of money people, lots of technical talent and lots of ideas all brought together for a few days and I think that if you're socially savvy you could make a lot from it.

What I did not like is how the organisers conduct themselves. Their approach to getting speakers is, I believe, totally offensive. I understand that they're running a business but they spam and bait-and-switch like no company I can recall in recent memory. I believe, or read somewhere, that their hiring practices for their volunteers/staff are pretty awful also.

I suppose it is what you make of it. Would I go to it again as an attendee? If the tickets were given to me and I was in or around Dublin at the time, certainly. Would I pay to attend myself? Probably not. If I were running a startup and wanted to get it in front of people, and to meet people who might be interested in it? I'd probably pay €1500 for the opportunity. It's not very expensive compared to the opportunities it may present. Worst case scenario is you have a few fun days in an interesting city.

I'm glad we're getting a better understanding of how much these variables contribute toward longevity and well-being. Now we just have to come up with a plan to deal with the challenges of people living far longer.

I don't know if I'm alone in noticing this, but there appears to be a larger divide in society along these lines opening up. More people seem to be exercising than ever - almost every guy I know has a gym membership, is taking part in a sport, or goes hiking, or whatever - where previously the same people may have been thin/healthy but sedentary.

On the other side of things, it appears that more people seem to be simply getting more fat and more sedentary. Where once there was thin/average and sedentary | mildly overweight and sedentary, it seems to be dividing to thin/average and pretty active | very fat and very sedentary.

That is all from personal observations, but it will be interesting to see the physical composition of society in 5-10 years time. What was once overweight has simply become normal, what was "fat" has now become huge and what was once a healthy weight has become the new thin.

That style of interaction does sound a lot easier to facilitate in an open-plan office.

What about something in the middle i.e. small teams working in offices by themselves, who've sufficient privacy from the grand noise of a totally open-plan office yet can communicate/chat/etc. amongst themselves very freely?