dreamweapon

Monica is really awesome. And deserves to be listened to.

It's not just a good idea for HN. It's a good practice to apply in one's everyday life, generally.

The decision that Google has made is unacceptable and unintelligible to CNNIC,

Standard language of the authoritarian mindset, everywhere.

In German: E-Mail, URL, CD-ROM, and Jeans are usually feminine, for example.

Basically, whenever a noun (or the core of a compound noun) has a direct (or close) translation to a frequently used noun in German, then it's quite common for its gender to "bleed" over into the English loanword.

So in the examples above, Mail → Post, URL → Verbindung, CD-ROM → Platte, Jeans → Hose, etc.

But does anybody use them?

Though its owners may sometimes crash there, it's not really a "residential" structure, per se. The primary purpose it serves is as a sophisticated portfolio diversification instrument -- or (for offshore title holders), a convenient money laundering device:

http://nymag.com/news/features/foreigners-hiding-money-new-y...

I totally agree about making price levels reflect true resource costs, ending bad incentivization systems, etc. (Meant to edit my first post to mention that, but got distracted).

So eating a single almond, grown in California, is like opening one of these (https://hornstrafarms.com/product_images/large/monadnock_gal...) and pouring it down the drain.

It's highly misleading to suggest that the net impact of cycling a gallon of agricultural water (including irrigation + rainfall) is equal to that of a dumping a gallon of drinking water (packaged and delivered to your door, no less!) down the drain, of course.

Also, while the water footprint of almonds (and pistachios, cashews, etc) isn't great, if you aren't comparing it to that of other high-impact foods (in terms of water use by weight of end product) like say, dried tomatoes, butter, or most four-legged meat products -- not only per gram of end product, but per recommended serving (which for nut products is comparatively modest) -- then you're not only not helping us understand how we got into this mess (and how to get out); you're just pushing people's buttons, basically.

Suddenly Dimon got quiet. He leaned back and slowly smiled. “So hit me with a fine. We can afford it.”

In which Dimon lucidly articulates for us why fines will never be sufficient -- and that these people won't start behaving themselves unless they start facing the same penalty that the rest of face for (in general) much lesser transgressions -- namely, jail time, and outright expropriation of their holdings.

Interestingly, one of the key origin vectors[1] for the 10X meme appears to have been a 2005 blog post by Mr. FogCreek himself:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html

[1] In the sense of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_(epidemiology)

But it's a good idea to go to parties.

It seems you're plainly misreading what I was saying. Not only did I not say you shouldn't go to parties, I specifically said you should go to parties, at that age. My only point was you should go there to socialize, and not for the alcohol.

And I attribute everything I have to the nights I spent not in front of the books, but in front of the crowd, dancing with a lampshade on my head.

That's fine for you, I guess. Something tells me what might have thought the other a bit "square", and hence avoided each other, in that life phase. Which is also fine.

But again, I never said you should trade parties and friend for books; only that you should definitely trade alcohol for books, by and large, during those years. And I for one am definitely very, very grateful for those nights spent in front of books, and not on someone's back porch getting wasted, when I was 14-21.

The only other point I'd like to clarify is that while I definitely do advocate becoming intimate with your local university library (and yes, spending more than the occasional Friday or Saturday night there), at one point or another -- the best time for that is probably when you're in high school, not college. During HS most parties suck anyway -- as do most of your so-called "friends" -- so you might as well be an outcast, and do something constructive with all of those precious hours (in front of a laptop, on a keyboard/drumkit -- or in the book stacks).

drink beer before its legal

My own advice would be: don't bother with alcohol until you're well beyond drinking age. And definitely don't bother with heavy drinking of any sort, in those years.

A lot of this has to with the observation being a student really is a 24x7 game, in those years (if you've chosen to go the student route, that is). While I definitely wasn't a "grind", I have to say that the only reason I made through the system as far as I did was that, aside from a healthy amount of distraction (movies, shows; and parties for the sake of socialization -- not for the alcohol) I really was studying, or thinking about the content of my studies, pretty much all the time. It was really all about being "always on" and intellectually focused, all the time.

And getting hammered on anything like a regular basis -- which is pretty much what the college drinking scene is like, these days -- really claws a huge chunk out of that dedicated focus. I'm just not sure I would have made it that far if I had taken up the interest in casual drinking in my mid- to late 20s.

It also, BTW, claws a huge chunk out of your wallet. $5 for a lager is nothing when you have a regular "adult" job, but (scaled up to rounds of 3-4 every few nights) it's a lot when you're on a student budget. There's only a certain period of your life when you can meaningfully benefit from the kind of ascetic detachment from the temptations and corruptions of a fat, "adult" paycheck. Later on, when you're more or less forced to go the high-paycheck route, you can indulge in the comfort-distraction that goes with it.

This is the time of life when you should be getting intimate with the local university library; reading Feynman or GEB or any of the other books mentioned on the bus; learning to draw or to play an instrument (just to show yourself that you can); and spending your last dime on that Godot flick and, perchance, a can of tomato sauce to heat up in fleabag apartment you and 4 others share downtown.

But beer? You'll have plenty of time for that, later.

Diversify (intellectually).

It's great to have deep focus (especially if you're in science and tech), but all the other stuff -- especially any creative arts you can actually perform with your own lung, lips, muscles and tongue -- can bring great benefits also; not just intellectually, but in terms of building and sustaining a basic, intrinsic sense of self-worth and confidence in a world that seems hell-bent on tearing it down every turn.

That -- and of course: meditate.

as if Russia will attempt to take over Europe or something, which is laughable.

As if this were anything other than straw man argument:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Is there any evidence the Dog is actually aware that he's "texting (or otherwise sending) a selfie" -- or even knows what a selfie is -- in any meaningful sense?

"How I taught my dog to thwack his paw on a big red button in response to a keyword signal" might be a better title.

Just because some people maybe overhyping the risks of (accessible) resource depletion doesn't mean it isn't a valid issue.

Is it possible we could use enough sand collected from the seabed to offset this sea rise?

Even current levels of seabed mining are considered deeply problematic for the oceans' ecosystems (already under heavy attack from overfishing, ship traffic, waste dispersal, and species transportation). And any effort that would make a dent in rising sea levels would be orders of magnitude greater.

Instead they're providing jobs to thousands year round and generate hundreds of millions in income.

He said, providing no hard data whatsoever.

Here's a link to the non-mobile version:

http://www.rferl.org/content/how-to-guide-russian-trolling-t...

It seems like you're saying that private enterprises should either completely divest themselves from any commitment to social responsibility (defined broadly as: "doing the right thing because it's the right thing, even when it may seem to go against the bottom line") -- or they might as well thrown in the towel and become philanthropies. Yes?

In other words -- on the blackhat-whitehat scale, it's either black- (or at least very charcoal-y grey-), or whitehat. But I just don't see modern, large companies generally acting that way -- not because they're led by altruists (they're certainly not); but because that's just not human nature (across the board). Most of us are greyhats (somewhere on the scale); and the behavior most business leadership I've either read about, or seen directly (behind closed doors) seems to fall somewhere on the greyhat scale, also.

That is: large business definitely aren't philanthropies -- but in general, most of them (even many of the traditional "bad boy" players like banks, big pharma, etc) -- aren't straight-up moral nihilists, either.

At least that's the way I observe these things. I could be wrong.

The smartest people I know who do personally work on AI think the scaremongering coming from people who don't work on AI is lunacy.

-- Marc Andreessen

Given that a significant portion of what marca himself says and advocates these days is, if not "lunacy", definitely from somewhere very deep in loose cannon territory -- and given the naked over-generalizations embedded in the statement itself (which, when you break it down, is basically a strawman argument) -- I'm just not sure what value he's adding to the discussion, here.

It's why they are created as firms instead of philanthropies.

A false dichotomy.

As if RT is in any way worse than, say, CNN.

My Russian friends would probably laugh at what you're saying. You have to be very, very naive about what's happening in Russia these days to have that impression.

There's no need to "smear" him. By appearing on RT, he's discredited himself enough.

Regarding what is perhaps General Mattis's finest work, the First Battle of Fallujah:

Burhan Fasa’a, an Iraqi journalist who worked for the Lebanese satellite TV station, LBC and who was in Fallujah for nine days during the most intense combat, said Americans grew easily frustrated with Iraqis who could not speak English.

“Americans did not have interpreters with them,” Fasa’a said, “so they entered houses and killed people because they didn’t speak English. They entered the house where I was with 26 people, and [they] shot people because [the people] didn’t obey [the soldiers’] orders, even just because the people couldn’t understand a word of English.” He also added, “Soldiers thought the people were rejecting their orders, so they shot them. But the people just couldn’t understand them.”

A man named Khalil, who asked not to use his last name for fear of reprisals, said he had witnessed the shooting of civilians who were waving white flags while they tried to escape the city.

“I watched them roll over wounded people in the street with tanks,” said Kassem Mohammed Ahmed, a resident of Fallujah. “This happened so many times.”

Other refugees recounted similar stories. “I saw so many civilians killed there, and I saw several tanks roll over the wounded in the streets,” said Aziz Abdulla, 27 years old, who fled the fighting last November. Another resident, Abu Aziz, said he also witnessed American armored vehicles crushing people he believes were alive.

Abdul Razaq Ismail, another resident who fled Fallujah, said: “I saw dead bodies on the ground and nobody could bury them because of the American snipers. The Americans were dropping some of the bodies into the Euphrates near Fallujah.”

"Fallujah Revisited", Dahr Jamil, November 2005

http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-jamail151105.htm

Ach, bitte.

There were plenty of shenanigans going on between the U.S. and German politicians in the early BRD days. But the scanned document everyone's been passing around purporting to refer to the so-called Kanzlerakte is obviously a fake.

As to 'Putin-Versteher' and RT shill Udo Ulfkotte:

I've written about the "journalist" Udo Ulfkotte over the years and was pleased that he seemed to have faded from view, disappearing into the pages of the 9/11 Truther Site of Kopp Verlag. Ulfkotte distinguished himself as a racist and anti-Islam hatemonger, demanding that all Muslims be deported from Germany in order to create more Lebensraum for ethnic Germans. For years he has been publishing articles and books that distort the truth, or are outright lies. A few examples: Ulfkotte claimed that Muslims were waging a "fecal Jihad" against Germans"because Turkish women were allegedly defecating in fields of strawberries that were exported to Germany. He warned Germans to stay away from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, since black African "savages" were planning to rape and murder European visitors. Of course, President Obama is one those black African savages - or at least a 'half-breed" - whom he hates. He lied that Obama was persecuting Christians in the United States, and had given orders to burn Bibles. I could go on and on. Actually, I cannot identify any examples where the "journalist" Udo Ulfkotte reported truthfully about anything.

http://www.dialoginternational.com/dialog_international/2015...

"And we'll use drone strikes to punish the evaders."

Unless the implication is that most/many of the other team members are also Indian?

That seems to be the implication. And yes, it may be relevant to understanding the context and merit of her claims.

EDIT: Not that the replacement hire's ethnicity by itself is relevant; but it may be relevant to her claim that after she was fired, they replaced her with with someone of the dominant ethnicity within that group.

The counterpoint to that is if we don't "mess" with them (i.e. mark them for preservation) now they're much more likely get plundered / messed with by other, less well-intentioned persons at some point later on.