Clanan

The AG is glossing over the roles of the different institutions here. Put simply, the FCC isn't delaying the vote because it doesn't take a democratic approach to rule-making. (There are also unknown ramifications of allowing DDoS attacks on comments to delay/"de-legitimize" policy decisions). Like many other agencies in the Executive branch, its leaders have broad powers to enact policies. The AG, like any clever politician, is scoring political points by yelling "think of the children!" instead of explaining how the process actually works and how constituents can actually impact the situation. This will not delay the vote, just like the Senate phone systems going down wouldn't delay a Senate vote.

If you value Net Neutrality, don't waste time with the FCC - it's simply not set up for constituent influence. Instead, focus your efforts on Congress. Congressional legislation would overrule the FCC, just as it was intended to. Congresspeople are far more likely to consider voter opinions too.

If you are a parent and are interested in this article, I highly recommend you go find another parenting method that actually provides any semblance of research, investigation, etc. This is nothing more than an anecdotal blog post about parenting, filled with agreeable-sounding ideas. Many of which seem to only pertain to handling children's learning, rather than overall parenting, but the author suggests them generally.

My two cents: children are not little adults and should not be treated as such. Adults have >20 years of life experience, children do not. Children do not know how to control emotions and are not reasonable (duh). There is substantial research into how children develop, including their brains and thought processes. For example, young children are not capable of abstract thought like adults are. This recent fad of treating children as equals is, to me, bizarre and damaging. Don't learn from a random blog post - go read the science (or a parenting book by someone who has). Anecdotally, children I encounter who are raised by this sort of method are rude, brittle know-it-alls who cannot accept being told 'no'.

My favorite parenting rule of thumb: teach your children now with rules and tough love because if you don't, the world will teach them later - and the world doesn't love your children.

Lately I think more and more threads would benefit from this posted at the top. This ignorant mindset is what develops after telling every well-off 20-something they'll "change the world!" by tossing out a few thousand lines of code.

> Moreover, with such a small number of people, buying them becomes “easy”;

Not to ignore your point, but there's actually substantial contention in the Political Science field about the impact of money. Does money flow to views, or do views flow to money? It's a difficult topic to study and is certainly not settled. Fun to delve into.

I'm on the fence regarding this issue. The scaremongering on both sides is absolutely ridiculous. The planned order hasn't even been released! On the one hand, I can see why monopolistic powers in the hands of ISPs would be bad, but I like that the order would restore "police" powers to the FTC instead of the FCC, and I can't blame ISPs for wanting a piece of the $ pie. And it's not like the internet was a horrible wasteland until 2015.

But then again, Pai plan proponents keep saying this will spawn more innovation and improve utilities. That sounds pretty dubious and I haven't seen much proof. I don't recall any big innovation suddenly being stifled in 2015.

In my perfect world, the regulatory power would go back to the FTC but it would at the same time release a plan for opening up internet utility access so small players can compete with the big ones.

Makes sense. Thanks for the thoughtful response.

Can someone "explain like I'm 5": why does this need government intervention? My gut reaction is that if these people can't afford to live in/near San Fran, a massive, amenities-filled city, they should find jobs elsewhere? If enough people take that approach, maybe the jobs will move elsewhere too? My family wanted to move to a big city but we saw the cost and decided not to. I don't want to assume it's an entitlement thing, but it sure reads like it.

The fix can certainly involve appealing to morals and human responsibility. A company is, after all, just a group of people. This should be a very strong tactic considering how liberal Silicon Valley is. The major players preach constantly about progressive ideals, yet fail to do more than the minimum when push comes to shove. My business partner and I purposefully pay normal taxes, avoiding accountants' crazy tax reduction schemes, because we think it's the right thing to do. We're a tiny speck compared to Apple, but the principle still applies. If the big players made it the norm, their investors would suck it up and deal with it.

Are you being serious? How about World War II. 60 million killed worldwide, 419,000 Americans.

I think this is a strong argument that's easily overlooked, like other "political" arguments vs. tech. I expect ample pushback against autonomous auto legislation because of the freedom/privacy implications. It's the government removing the primary means of transport for the entire population, and placing it into the hands of massive corporations. A huge gathering of power for Big Brother.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Supreme Court ruled such laws unconstitutional. Car culture == freedom of expression or something.

I think we see similar behavior with other famous/rich people; Hollywood stars are always involving themselves in politics (and are often surprised when their engagement means nothing).

That being said, the point of campaigning for office is to demonstrate why you deserve the votes. Nothing wrong with a young successful guy giving it a try. Who knows - maybe the qualities that made him successful would translate well to governing. If anything, I think we should encourage more non-lawyers to run!

Your argument would be much stronger with data. I wouldn't be surprised if the truth is somewhere in the middle and I certainly wouldn't discount the impact of the Vietnam War, feminism, social services, heck even consumerism, etc. on the tendency of people to work or stay at home.

And you're totally right that homemaker/stay-at-home-parent should be represented in the workforce... developing software is cake compared to that workload.

I don't have a whole lot to add, except to say that this is a great article with excellent presentation of data (minus the flexible boundaries; -10% female construction!).

Uber won't just be out the $360 million on the cars. They'll be out the 40,000 drivers who may not be able to get another leased car.

I want to see the pitch deck that convinced investors eggless mayo was work a quarter of a billion bucks.

I think history shows that the distinction is important; some agencies are well-adapted to handling these issues, while others are not. I'm still undecided, but I've read that the FCC's action in 2010 was a political power grab by friends of the administration (e.g. Google). On the other hand, the FTC has a strong history of trust-busting, e.g. AT&T in 1984, making it the stronger contender for actually handling net neutrality in essence. Whether or not that's true (see other comments), I'm not sure.

I've read that the FTC vs. FCC distinction is important because the FTC has a strong history of trustbusting, e.g. AT&T in 1984. Your comment is an interesting political ramification that certainly weakens the above argument.

Can someone please respond to the actual pro-repeal arguments (in a non-John-Oliver-smug way)? Everyone is focusing on "woe is the unfree internet!" which seems like a spoonfed, naive response with no content. And just having Google et. al. on one side isn't enough of a reason, given their motivations. The given reasons for the current FCC's actions appear to be:

1. The Title II Regs were designed during the Great Depression to address Ma Bell and don't match the internet now.

2. The FCC isn't the right vehicle for addressing anti-competitive behavior in this case; the FTC would be better.

3. The internet didn't need fixing in 2010 when the regs were passed.

That reflects the problems with research funding - they too incentivize "desired" results, rather than knowledge (good or bad).

1. Companies investing hundreds of millions want to ensure a return 2. Food companies want customers to eat (and not die from) their products.

Groundbreaking, I know.

It's certainly a confusing subject, especially now that more attention is being paid to it. We've had our share of acquaintances comment that their kids are also allergic because one time they ate something with a peanut and had an itch later that day. In our case there's immediate throat/tongue swelling so it's an obvious one.

In all seriousness, the best bet for concerned people is to see the doc and get tested. Our kid's reaction to the prick test was ~10x the normal "allergy" reaction - the doc immediately stopped the test and gave him medicine. (As mentioned elsewhere, kids do grow out of the allergy so it's important to retest!)

According to our allergist, the problem with peanut allergies in particular is that the reaction can vary dramatically for the same person. Ingesting it one time may cause nothing but hives, whereas another will result in throat constriction within minutes. Cue the news stories where people with seemingly minor allergies are suddenly in the hospital. For example, recently a girl in CA with a known allergy took a bite of a peanut butter brownie and then spit it out. Her parent, who was a doctor, waited 20 min to administer the EpiPen. She died.

(Disclaimer: not a doctor, probably didn't remember everything right, etc.)

As the parent of a child with a severe, life-threatening peanut allergy, these treatments could be a Godsend. It's hard to describe the life change that occurs when a normal food like peanuts suddenly becomes a disguised killer that could take my child away at any moment. The speed with which it strikes is stunning; according to our allergist, we have only minutes to administer EpiPens to avoid the runaway anaphylactic reaction. And we've done so. The tragic story that begins the article seems a testament to this - if a reaction isn't countered in time, it can't be.

I miss Snickers.

There's no such thing as agnostic fact checkers. Facts are complicated by context and anyone who claims to objectively "check" them is selling you snake oil. For example, the lead Snopes fact-checker was previously a liberal blogger. Guess which way their fact-checking skews?

We're all human and we have our biases, whether we like it or not. It doesn't take much effort to tweak an assertion to go from "Mostly false" to "mostly true" - it just depends on which one the writer favors. My BS detector goes haywire whenever someone claims to offer non-subjective anything. tl;dr investigate facts and claims yourself and never trust those who have power over you, even if you vote for them!

I've only developed professionally for ~6 years but here's the mandatory non-answer: make sure you prioritize "life" things too, especially when doing full-time plus side projects. My kids are still young but I already wish I had spent even more time with them when they were teeny.

Your examples do not mean much when it comes to actual influence and its use. Google relies on blatantly left-leaning "fact checkers", Schmidt was very active in HRC's campaign, Twitter actively censors Right-leaning hashtags and users [1], Facebook censor(s/ed) conservatives [2]. Do you really think actual censorship and suppression (when claiming otherwise and pretending to be objective) is less important than letting Trump takes questions?

[1] http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/media/303295-how-faceb...

[2] http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-supp...

This is how Uber is going to train it's self-driving cars, isn't it?

Heavily dilute? That's a bit dramatic. There was a tablet, now there's a laptop too.

There's a great early SO podcast with Jeff A. and Joel Spolsky (Fogcreek) where they argue about whether developers should know C and/or C++. Joel is rigidly in favor of it, whereas Jeff thinks it's pointless. It's a great back-and-forth, hearing these two successful guys scratching their heads at each other's comments and stubbornness.

A simple google search will provide you with numerous examples, even of Snopes in particular. Here's one[0] by Snopes where the True/False statements don't even match the claim. It's obvious the "fact checker" (i.e. journalist) contorted the argument to reach a desired conclusion.

[0] http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-freed-child-rapist-lau...

"A chance discovery occurred when one of the scientific team, Federica Bertocchini, an amateur beekeeper, was removing the parasitic pests from the honeycombs in her hives. The worms were temporarily kept in a typical plastic shopping bag that became riddled with holes."

What a great accident.