throwawayqdhd

I like Mozilla's the most. It's most human-like and thus, easiest to understand

This is just a ploy to ensure that George RR Martin doesn't stop writing once the original WordStar stops working!

As with everything else that Stripe does, these books are beautifully designed as well. For me, their design has to be their differentiating factor.

Look at everyone in these replies pretending to be race blind. If this kid was Asian, you'd just go "eh, Asian prodigies" and not give it any further attention.

Mozart was writing symphonies by this age. Prodigies exist in every field.

Is there a geographical bias in your skepticism? Would you be as skeptical if this kid was from Norway or Sweden or Austria?

Not knocking this effort, but why are all decentralized, open social networks that hope to compete against Facebook and Instagram so...dull?

Their marketing is all the same wholesomeness and positive messaging. There's no "rebellious" streak to it at all.

But wholesomeness didn't help Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram grow. Facebook was the "adults only" social network that required a .edu address when it was challenging MySpace. Snapchat was pretty much a sexting app. Instagram is basically semi-nude models in its search feed.

I get what these people are trying to do, but you're not going to do that by being boring and corporate.

Google Drive lost some of my files due to syncing errors early on. Dropbox didn't.

Google Drive might have improved since (and I do use Google Apps for email and documents), but I haven't been able to forget that experience and trust Dropbox.

The idea that venture-backed startups are going to "democratize" finance and wretch it from the hands of big banks is ridiculous.

I would be really interested in an Apple designed car, not exactly an Apple created self-driving tech suite. I trust Apple's design far more than I trust Apple's hard tech chops, especially when it comes to processing massive amounts of data

I've always wondered what percentage of people use coffee for stimulation, and what percentage use it simply to induce the first bowel movement

When I was slightly younger (I'm 29 right now), I must have tried most nootropics imaginable, including microdosing LSD (slightly pleasant) and modafinil (worthless). I was looking for that "magic bullet" that would make me more focused and productive.

Nothing really worked.

What did work was waking up early and working out regularly. I sleep by 11 and wake up by 6. I get at least two hours of work in before hitting the gym for 45-60 minutes.

I manage to get far, far more work done than any Nootropic I ever tried.

It's an unequal relationship. Free trade would mean that Google and Amazon and Ford get a level playing field in China as well. But that's not the case.

The mainstream media has become a terrible place for any sort of rational discussion. They're too busy criticizing Trump to analyze the impact of these moves.

I have zero love for the man, but it's clear that the US has the upper hand in this trade war and should be able to squeeze China for better deals.

The upside is that we can still edit them all anytime :)

True. When I was starting out, I was tasked with editing the Wikipedia page of one of our clients to add more information. Wasn't anything sinister; the company just wanted to ensure the page had up to date information.

When I ventured to the 'Talk' page, I was surprised to see so many edits and comments from editors.

This was for a little known company in a niche field with little traffic or chance to profit. Yet the editors were as diligent as ever.

Story of the year for me. Just goes to show what we can accomplish together.

Hopefully it will go as a +1 in our ledger if the fate of our species is ever decided

You really have to love Wikipedia. It's barely a week old and you already have a page with so many references and detailed information. Thank you, all the anonymous contributors.

In India, Flipkart is often criticized for "copying" Amazon's idea (not that "sell stuff online" was revolutionary to begin with).

But the thing is, Flipkart entered the Indian market before Amazon.

As a consumer, I derived more value from Flipkart's "copy" that served me than from Amazon's "originality".

Same with Android. As a consumer, Android may have copied iOS, but Android's copy was far more affordable to me, and hence, I derived far more value from it than the original.

Businesses live and die by cash flow. What if cash flows instantly 24/7?

Business payments are delayed not because there is an underlying fault in the payment systems (wire transfers are nearly instantaneous, at least within the country), but because businesses sit on payments.

A new technology isn't going to solve this problem. Businesses like to hold onto invoices as long as they can get away with it.

Not really. Liquidity is a major problem. Properties sit n the market for years sometimes (as my dad's) before finding a buyer at supposed market valuation (which, in my view, is highly inflated)

Politicians spend the money to fund campaigns, but also on handing out favours, jobs and cash to constituents. “It’s sort of an unholy nexus,” as Raghuram Rajan put it to me during his tenure as head of India’s central bank. “Poor public services? Politician fills the gap; politician gets the resources from the businessman; politician gets re-elected by the electorate for whom he’s filling the gap.”

I know this will never be popular opinion, but as a citizen of a poor, developing country with widespread corruption, I sometimes have to wonder: is democracy really the best model for poor nations that don't have the foundations to foster it?

If the developing world switched over to a high meat diet as the developed world, it would be an environmental catastrophe

The thing is, the people you mentioned in Bangalore didn't even have access to water 50 years ago. India is a great example because the country has progressed on all metrics so much in the last few decades. You don't recognize it because you see such abject poverty in front of you. 30 years ago, this poverty was more hidden in that the country mostly lived in rural areas, far away from cities.

Even more absurd is their confidence that they can leash up hyper-masculine private security contractors - the men who hold the guns and kill for a living.

making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind

This almost sounds like a parody

It's so strange to hear this perennial talk of the apocalypse when factually, we've never lived in a more prosperous, healthier, and better connected world.

Maybe these wealthy people know more than I do, but I've just seen literally billions lifted out of abject poverty and apocalypse-like situations in the last 20 years alone in China and India.

We haven't had a major war in more than half a century. Disease rates are lower than they've ever been. Dying from hunger was a very real thing for the majority of the world, but it's a problem we've erased quite a bit.

Man I love this. Very neat! Kind of like markdown for calendaring.

If you wrap this up in a more 'fashionable' ux, you'd have a big hit

I'd love to just upload a text file with my entire plans for the week.

Right now even if these people are able to connect, working out how to actually pay each other is very awkward

I'm one of those people. Paying me is honestly pretty damn trivial and a solved problem.

Heck, I've hired people in the US and paid them online right from my bank's interface.

Another problem I have with crypto is how elitist it all is, especially for an instrument with rather libertarian, even anarchist roots.

Mining BTC requires exceptional investment, which basically makes it feasible only for the rich.

Understanding BTC requires technical knowledge 99% of the world does not have.

Heck, with all the regulatory hurdles, even using BTC requires more effort than most people have the time to expend.

(Yes, you can transfer BTC from one wallet to another fairly easily. But turning that BTC into actually useful local currency can be ridiculously complicated, depending on your local laws.)

This is pretty much the same attitude that will keep Bitcoin out of the mainstream.

Statements like that make Bitcoiners come across as digital survivalists, the internet equivalent of redneck militia.