mtowle

We should try to lower this number as much as possible!

It took me less than a minute to google "social mobility in the US today" (non-leading query) to find the following examples with data (and there are many more from other respectful sources):

Non-leading query. Hahahaha. As if that matters. There are two types of articles written on the topic, and you found the one you were looking for. This is evidence of exactly nothing.

NB: the presence of a '%' in an article does not a well-done study make. Further, studies on this topic have been commissioned by double-blind souls approximately never.

YMail also lets you sign in with GMail. Obv, we're all aware of the Mayer connection, but it's still a curious move. What's Yahoo's play here? "Users." Okay, but what's the play? Cast aside all notions of vanity, and keep your eye on what you really want? (To train eyes on their content portal?) (Can it really be the case that Y.com is last man standing in the portal wars? Huh!)

the fact that we should

Can't have a factual should. Shoulds are normative.

What is kind of useless is a word that can mean some thing or its opposite

Is the word really useless or indeed useful if no one can provide a 'real' example of actual ambiguity between the two meanings? Furthermore, it's not as if ambiguity between one meaning and an opposite meaning is the greatest ambiguity there is-- if anything, it makes it particularly obvious which meaning the speaker intends.

What do you call predictions whose sum is not predictive?

A noble thought, but given the way TechCrunch, et al. scour the site for something, anything to blow out of proportion, a policy section could be asking for trouble. Nothing worse than bloggers conflating your personal politics with would-be thought-leaders whose endowment of idle time is surely coincidental.

Only forums on which there is no point in activism, of either sort(1), can survive their own prosperity. Forums are conversational; activism is the antithesis thereof.

PG is trying, and you have to tip your hat, if the 4-hours-per-day stories are true, but talk about Sisyphean.

(1) "I" or "We"

BREAKING: In a surprise belated April Fool's joke, Google revives Reader, according to former CEO Eric Schmidt, "just to fuck with everyone who spent money developing a shitty alternative."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5976363

When writers get on soapboxes, they open themselves up to this category of response. Mere question-asking ("Is there a disparity? If so, why?") on Brad's part would be one thing, but his article is accusatory; he condescends to everyone but himself. And if he were right, again, that would be different, but he's not. He's just being a dick. Fuck him.

Ah, and were he not to have done so, are we so sure the NSA bits and pieces would be dominating the headlines, or might those have drifted into the background regardless? Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen.

Litotes

Apparently WaPo's key demo is imbeciles.

You can play around with the graph here, and the trends don’t change substantially if you try “NSA” instead of “National Security Agency” or look at how the whole world is searching rather than just Americans.

Oh yeah? What if you combine the two?

Further, Brad Plumer, you may want to put yourself in the position of someone doing a Google search before you announce what people are trying to find info on. If I search NSA, what happens? I get results that don't have anything to do with the PRISM story. Same goes for the word 'prism'. 'Snowden', on the other hand, will bring me exactly what I need, so that's what I'm going to search for. Or don't they teach you how to Google at the Post?

I'll stop there. Anybody with half a brain could think of another dozen mundane ways to call Brad Plumer stupid. Except, of course, for Blad Plumer, who is stupid.

Ohhh I get it. Very clever, Wikileaks!

Certain countries, I believe Switzerland is one, require for asylum some proof that your home country/maybe certain other countries can't protect you.

This was a show of proof. They knew somebody would take the bait.

A man after my own heart. Do programming textbooks/tutorials pain you as well?

BREAKING: In a surprise belated April Fool's joke, Google revives Reader, according to former CEO Eric Schmidt, "just to fuck with everyone who spent money developing a shitty alternative."

Why We Spy on Our Allies (2000)

>your economic patron saint is still Jean Baptiste Colbert, whereas ours is Adam Smith.

We Are All Mercantilists Now (2008)

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/09/we_are_all_mercantili...

I doubt this would be able to shift it.

This is cheating on my part, but I agree and disagree.

a) Yes, it's unlikely any one event has the necessary inertia to shift a continent's finance capital from one city to another.

b) Everything starts somewhere. No single assassination is likely to start the largest global conflict in human history, yet Franz Ferdinand's assassination is credited with having "started" WWI. In reality, a number of necessary elements contributed, but human history is written in narrative fashion, and scene 1 of WWI begins with Franz, the way most people tell it. Similarly, the last ~40 years have been very interesting, currency-wise, I think, so, it may do to have an eye out for something big enough to light this powderkeg. Since so much of finance is based on trust, in one form or another, an event that dramatically reduces global trust in the dominant parties of the era would be one logically viable catalyst.

Perhaps biased, being something of a Germanophile, but Germany could be the uniquely positioned party here.

If the UK loses its continental influence, the willingness of Euro-based business to respect the Pound (in trade, I mean - their acceptance, online or elsewhere, of the Pound as currency without first converting to Euro) may diminish. Further, London may fall out of the tech industry's graces as a good destination for regional headquarters.

In either case, the UK's loss is France/Germany's gain - likely moreso Germany's because they're already ahead by a bit.

Being an American, I know less than Jon Snow about how EU power works, but if the UK's losses mount and create a power vaccuum at/near the top, Germany and France are leading states even moreso than they were before. What that might amount to, I couldn't say.

reactionary

In certain contexts, that word means 'counter-revolutionary', so be careful when using it to describe WikiLeaks. It's good that you had the presence of mind to include that i.e.! ;)

No I don't. I mean there's no point in extending a protection if you're just going to take it right back.

To clarify...

I recommend not doing this again.

Too bad the Royal Wedding already happened. Friday night that weekend would've been perfect.

"Traffic collision"

Literally nobody has ever done that. Try understanding his comment a different way. Like, say, that the human protections against violence preclude humans who chose to act violently, ergo if we extend that protection to animals, many of them would lose that protection as soon as it was extended to them.

a) Honesty costs money. If somebody wants to tell you something for free, they also want to do something else with/to you.

b) Networking events are for networking.

All non-mathematical/non-logical/etc. equivocations are false if you're enough of a dick about it. The dude is trying to make a legitimate point about disc-based vs. cloud-based storage, and there's exactly one player in that area. Give him a freakin' break.

Sometimes being the one guy who does want to do public service makes the difference, because all the other 'good hackers' are more concerned with one solution that will solve all the world's problems (which never happens) and making a quick buck.

Speaking of things that never happen.

It took me a while to understand your point, I think because I assumed you were challenging my comments. Once I understood, though, I found this to be a very well-positioned anecdote. And having belonged to a Mormon Boy Scout troop, I don't doubt the truth of it for a second. Identity is a powerful construct. Plus, the bigger your 10%, the better, right? Call it reclamation.

Fact: Nobody has ever conspired to do anything, ever.

Lol. It's not like you're going to tell the cogs what the machine is up to.

The one thing about conspiracies I always consider is the number of complicit persons involved.

Yeah, this is like the ground level of thought on these topics. Let's not turn our backs red.

If you read the Assange-Schmidt transcript, you will recall a section wherein Assange calls it unwise to encrypt your email, presumably because you stick out like a sore thumb. It's like telling anyone monitoring the network, "Hey! Look at me!"