Well, induced coma has all sorts of problems and some potentially very dangerous or serious side effects. It would be something like that, but fully safe and with no negatives.
A bit off the main topic, but I've always wondered when we'll develop some sort of anesthesia/hibernation hybrid where when a person catches a disease that makes life uncomfortable or miserable, they would be put in suspension, similar to hibernation or general anesthesia, and reamin in that state until he or she is cured. For example, going through chemotherapy and radiotherapy, while unconscious, or even just dreaming, makes it way more appealing to me. I can think many, many other instances where this would be desirable.
The real worthwile goal is having a high GDP /per capita/. If you take the top countries by GDP alone, you have China, India, Brazil, US. None of them are at the top in quality of life measurements.
Wait, I just realized now that universal free vaccination might not be a thing in the US. I live in a developing country with 200 million people, and the dozen or so most common vaccines are free to everyone, and everyone gets it and it is managed by the government. I'm sorry, but it works. Government here has /many/ faults, but managing vaccination for 200+ million's not really one of them.
Except the number of people who received that education was much smaller than the number of people who go to average-quality schools today.
Here in Brazil people complain about the public schools of today, saying that 50 years ago it was great, there was latin, and french, and this and that. They all forget that the public schools from the 1960's were for the middle and upper classes (here in Brzil). The poor either had a couple of years of some very basic education, or just went to work and had none at all.
I would say the ability to think critically, coupled with a good literacy foundation, is more important than just literacy.
I know many will say literacy is the building block to critical thinking, or something along those lines, but I don't know, I've now known many, many examples that don't support the idea.
> We use the term as sarcastic self-mockery and as encompassing umbrella to identify ourselves with nations all over the world under the same predicaments.
Sorry, but 'third world' is really only offensive to people from first world countries who find the term 'third world' offensive. Oh, and it might also be offensive to people in developing countries who can afford developed countries' lifestyles.
I may not agree with the usage either, but that's what I see all around the third world countries that I've been to, and the one where I have lived since I was born. No one really cares, and no one is offended (except see previous paragraph).
Yes it does. What you can have, and usually do, is free speech with limitations, and this can vary greatly. What you have in the US is limitations, for example, regarding content that includes minors. In my country, racist speech falls under anti-racism laws, so our free speech has even more limitations, or, to put it another way, our speech is 'less' free.
Chess is good for kids, but I fortunately fell out of the "chess makes kids smarter" trap a few years before I had my own kids. Besides teaching self-control, focus, how to think more strategically, etc, getting very good at chess will mean that you are just that: very good at chess. So I taught my kids and they play when they want, but they seem to get the same benefits from other boardgames of varying complexity, and many times that's what they enjoy more.
I sort of feel like a dunce reading this thread, as I can't get my head around the fact that Youtube removing a video is being called censorship. Doesn't Hacker News let readers downvote unpopular opinions until they're effectively erased? Why isn't anyone calling HN on its censorship? Is it just the size of the viewership that matters, as if, after a big enough user threshold you have to act like a public service? I'm being honest here, why should Youtube have to host any uploaded video it doesn't want to? Question to free speech absolutists: should Youtube allow pornographic videos on its site? What about extremely violent videos, like car crash fatalities, etc? What about child pornography? Why does Youtube /have/ to host garbage?
Isn't the issue here something else, that a lot of people now have bandwith to express what they want, yet the biggest channels for this expression are just like every other important commercial segment, in that a few very big companies are in control of most of the bandwith? When did network TV stations were accused of censorship if they didn't want to air a KKK ad, or interview one of its leaders just because he wanted to air his opinions on race?
That just means it's a low value conversation. The end effect is very different. In my country there are anti-racism laws that /can/ put you in jail for saying something considered racist. Btw, I'm not totally against those laws. To say free speech has to be completely, 100% free, say /anything/ and any message you can think of, seems flawed to me.
I'm pretty sure parent meant western Europe, not China and Russia. Who would assume someone means China and Russia when talking about countries with free speech?
I would argue that if he had stepped down from MS in the early 90's, that some other company with a ruthless CEO would take its place. I mean, remember Apple's superbowl ad? Look at what is is today. Remember "Don't be evil"? Ruthless search for power is the history of humankind, and I agree that the actors shouldn't be given a pass. However, what Gates is doing with his foundation is to be admired, as I don't see much of that done, not at this scale. His foundation has never done any good to the world? (sorry, but that's what you mean when you say he has /never/ made the world brighter.)
I never worked in tech, so to me I couldn't care much about the state of software in the 90's. I used whatever word processor was available, and whatever browser, and it didn't make a difference to me. I'm sorry, but this is how /most/ people who weren't in tech felt about it. Ask a mother of a hungry child with no access to clean water if she prefers Netscape or IE. (I know this is harsh and completely ignores the repercussions of Microsoft's actions and stances in the 90's, and that an opinion like mine will irritate a lot of people who were in tech in that era, but I doubt without MS it would have been too much different. Maybe it would have been old IBM, maybe DELL, who knows. If not, why are we complaining so much about Facebook's practices, about data privacy, etc. Isn't Microsoft gone from that role? Shouldn't it have been solved then?
Every now and then somebody I know will post a photo with a proverb mistakenly attributed to some historical figure. It's not uncommon for the proverb to be very simple, not very deep, such that I immediately discard it as made-up and not really written by the famous figure. There's actually quite a lot of this. Many bad lines attributed to great poets float around the net.
I don't think highly of the NeXT logo either, but this comment on the article makes a good argument:
"Considering how well recognized the NeXT logo is in the industry even though it was a minor company with barely any market, the logo is as remarkable as their products were"
Ok, I agree, but is a kid who spent several years on intentional chess practice better academically then a kid who spent several years on intentional math practice?
As someone in Brazil, it's equally amusing to me. And I know gun control is not a simple matter, and is not a magical solution, but man... this administration is going in the direction of not only less control, but less responsability (making it even harder than it already is to trace ammunition, for example)
Not only that, but in São Paulo a taxi license was in some places worth a lot of money. License owners would typically rent it, and would illegally hoard them, giving them to family members who never drove a taxi, just so he could have more and rent them out. Legally, one person could only own one. Then there are the taxi companies, which also hoarded hundreds of licenses, mostly through corrupt means.
Of course there's an issue with change. That's the whole point. If you were a pro Emacs/Vi user that used shortcuts to do pretty much everything and it made you fast and productive, what do you think would happen if suddenly you had to use new shortcuts for all the ones you had already commited to memory?
In Brazil we have "Capitalization Titles" that banks can offer to its clients. Usually you sign up with a fixed monthly fee (say R$50/month) for 1 year, and the chance to win monthly or weekly sweepstakes. When the period is over, you get your money back, plus some little earnings, usually just enough to cover inflation. I'm not too familiar with it, but that's basically it. Very common here.
The HIV treatment program, provided by the brazilian government for free to everyone that needs it, has been very succesful and is a model to be followed. Not everything the government does is rotten, just a lot of it.
"Throughout the 1990s, when the annual cost of drugs for AIDS treatment often exceeded US$10,000 per patient, the World Bank and other development agencies discouraged developing countries from implementing treatment programs, favoring “cost-effective” prevention over costly treatment. Brazil challenged this conventional wisdom and, despite World Bank objections, has provided free universal access to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) for all people living with HIV/AIDS since 1996."
source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2782963/
"Some like McCandless, show up in Alaska, unprepared, unskilled and unwilling to take
the time to learn the skills they need to be successful. These quickly get in trouble and
either die by bears, by drowning, by freezing or they are rescued by park rangers or other
rescue personnel–but often, not before risking their lives and/or spending a lot of
government money on helicopters and overtime.
When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did
wasn’t even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic and inconsiderate. First off, he spent
very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail
without even a map of the area. If he had a good map he could have walked out of his
predicament using one of several routes that could have been successful."
The machine I have is so easy that I ended up getting two. I just pour a quart of UHT milk in each one, don't bother boiling, add yogurt starter, turn on, put great thick yogurt in the fridge 9 hours later.
Do you know why that is? Is it the quality of the culture on the store bought? This also happens with me, however, the 2 rounds that I get from it are very good, thick, creamy yogurt, so I assume it has to have live cultures. Maybe I'm wrong?
Nope, this was more like a 10 year old being savagely beaten by a 30 year old very strong, very violent, out of his mind MMA fighter who wanted to kill the 10 year old.
What you're saying makes sense for some breeds. The whole point was that pitbulls are more agressive and violent than other breeds.
Well, he wasn't a dog behaviorist, and he's not required to know how to adequately deal with vicious dogs trying to tear apart little ones. Stabbing the pitbull saved the other dog's life.