ahomescu1

I can't speak for digitalsurgeon, but I can think of a few (without having ever studied at either of those universities):

1) The professors. Imagine taking classes and interacting with Nobel prize winners, or other famous people in your field (let's say, taking a class with Knuth at Stanford).

2) The networking/social aspects. Imagine being college roommates with "the next Mark Zuckerberg", whoever that may be.

3) More cynically, the pedigree. This one isn't strictly required, but it helps enormously if you want to get into academia, and it can also help you with an industry career or start a startup (it can make things easier).

That wasn't the point. The discussion was about self-interest, not rationality. People act out of self-interest all the time, even when appearing altruistic (it just happens that sometimes the interests of others align with your own interests).

There are definitely selfish reasons to do all of those things. Examples:

> How does it explain soldiers, risking their lives and health for low pay and horrendous working conditions?

Soldiers defend their own families and friends against invaders who would kill or enslave everyone. That's perfectly reasonable, but it can also be considered selfish.

> People working on free open source projects

FOSS projects can be very interesting and rewarding work, not monetarily but in other ways (in excitement, reputation or maybe glory).

> People spending extra money on social benefits, such as fair trade coffee or electric/hybrid cars

Electric cars are better for the environment, and I imagine many people want a clean environment for everyone, themselves included.

> People choosing to be parents?

One reason to have kids is to have someone to take care of you in your old age (both materially and emotionally). Many people hate the idea of growing old alone.

> I had a friend interview with Google to work in their uptime group or something like that. He had to solve some brainteaser about generating an in-order list of numbers that meet a certain criteria in O(n) time and constant space. I get that someone somewhere thought it was a good idea. But if you're tasked with keeping failures from happening being able to solve that brainteaser doesn't say anything about your suitability for the job. Being able to imagine disaster scenarios and how they'll play out seems a lot more important to me.

I think Google's approach to hiring has generally been "let's hire really smart and overqualified people and then they'll be suitable for any job".

> Reduce the patent age from 100 years to a decade.

The duration of a patent in the US is 17 years, AFAIK.

> Patent infringement doesn't require intent.

I know, but that's the whole point: maybe it should (in a lawsuit at least).

Sure, and then it would be up to the patent holder to prove intentional infringement. Otherwise, they don't get anything. That's how the legal system works in many other situations, the accuser has to prove their accusations, which is perfectly reasonable to me.

> Android would be "impaired" if it shipped a general-purpose mail client rather than one designed specifically for Gmail?

Android includes (or at least used to include) a generic email app called Email.

> It would be "impaired" if part of the setup process was to select an app store[0], a browser[1], and a maps app[1]?

You can have all of those, and more, with custom ROMs like Cyanogenmod, or even with AOSP alone.

I imagine if you were ever on TV or in the newspaper/a magazine with your picture in it, you can just carry the newspaper around with you everywhere and show them that picture.

I think someone like Barack Obama or Al Pacino can easily "prove their identity".

> As an non-american this baffles me. Why is there so much distrust towards the government, police, and military in US ? Isn't the US the oldest democracy ?

I don't think you speak on behalf on all non-Americans. As an Eastern European, I can perfectly understand mistrust of government and police (and I think people from many other countries can share these feelings).

> But there's no explanation of why we don't need a GOT any more.

I think it's related to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378861

First thought in my mind when I saw the headline: "huh, an article about corporations???"

From the link:

   To test your app, you need three things:

    Your APK.
    PC, Mac, Linux, or Chromebook on Chrome Version 41+.
    The ARC Welder app.

I successfully installed the ARC Welder app on my Macbook (haven't tried it yet though).

> (assuming you work for about 50 years)

I meant 40 years here (and HN won't let me edit the comment anymore).

Those don't sound like "taxes" in the sense that they're paid by the entire population, they're just direct payments to the school and only paid by students and parents (those who directly benefit from the service of education).

What I am trying to say is that, from an individual perspective, it makes more sense to pay the $15k. If you're making $50k/year in income, 3% of that for the rest of your life (assuming you work for about 50 years) comes to about $60k, which is what 4x$15k is anyway. However, if your income is above that, you pay significantly more. The US median income in 2014 was $51939 (got this number from a quick Google search, might not be 100% accurate), so half the population would indeed pay a total sum larger than $60k with a 3% tax.

> Sure, I'd take lower taxes if Californian kids had to pay just a couple thousand more to college than French kids. But $14k more? Insanity. Raise my taxes please.

Do the numbers really come out in favor of raising taxes? Another commenter gave the 3% required rate for the tax increase. Would a student actually be better off paying 3% extra taxes for the rest of his/her life, as opposed to paying 15k/year for only 4 years (I'm asking from a numbers perspective)?

The Galaxy S5 has a form of fingerprint unlocking: http://www.cnet.com/how-to/a-deep-dive-into-the-galaxy-s5s-s...

I think I'll do the following (as a joke, surprised no one did it already):

  $ alias stalk='less +F'

I'm not sure if the book covers this, but I'm more curious about technical details like why Java was chosen as the language and why Dalvik as the VM (I know, "it wasn't the JDK/JRE", but then why not a different language?), and other interesting choices (Linux for the kernel, for example).

Wish the article had more about the creation of Android, and less about Rubin's personal history.

> So if interest rates reverse their course (even if only slightly), the asset owning rich will suffer, and earners will gain.

Plenty of middle class people own their own homes, so it sounds like your proposal would also hit them significantly. On the other hand, many rich people own companies (or parts of), which aren't exactly assets (not like a private jet or a mansion is).

> According to the headline (and also economic theory and extensive empirical evidence), rent control hurts renters. On the other hand, Prop 13 does not.

I think (guessing a bit here) is that the argument goes like this: repealing Prop 13 would drive down house prices, allowing some renters to instead buy/mortgage, therefore reducing the demand for rentals, driving rents down.

> Interesting the MacBook is lighter than the MacBook Air.

They missed such a great opportunity to call it the MacBook Helium.

> Because here is the thing about interviews: they are incredibly hostile experiences for candidates.

Minor nitpick from a grad student here: interviews are nowhere near as hostile as academic peer reviews for papers. In an interview, the interviewers aren't actively trying to find any holes in your logic (no matter how small). To me, technical interviews are a walk in the park compared to conference submissions.

More often, when talking about naming/indentation conventions, consistency is more important than who's right. The entire code base should look exactly the same (no exceptions).

I wonder if he's aware of this NDSS 2015 paper: http://www.internetsociety.org/doc/exploiting-and-protecting...

TL;DR version: the JIT becomes a separate process that maps the code cache as RW, while the browser itself only sees a RX mapping. They also discuss why flipping between RW and RX in the same process is insecure (basically, TOCTTOU attacks from different threads).

> Implicit in this claim is the idea that somehow we need someone to own things. Why is that exactly?

Tragedy of the commons. When scarce resources are communally owned, they tend to get exploited even worse than when they're privately owned.

All of that also seems true of the US. Everyone wants a "leadership" role, either in government or in the private sector as CEOs or management in general, and even schools nurture students into "leadership" more than "science". Even in Silicon Valley, engineers and scientists don't enjoy the highest status (founders are above them, and VCs above that).

Arguably, the only place in the US where scientists are on the top of the food chain (or close to) is academia.

> Geeks always seem to worship autocrats and dictators for whatever reason.

That's not entirely true, there are also plenty of libertarian geeks (including here on HN).

> In short, the Croatian government and their finance ministers/advisers probably aren't stupid. They have actual data and a knowledge of their own people and situation to go on. They aren't just playing armchair economist. And though I couldn't name one of them, I'm willing to bet that they thought this move through. Doesn't mean that there won't be any of the dire consequences that you've predicted here, but they've probably weighed the odds more carefully than you think.

Or they're a bunch of politicians trying to score a win in the next election, by any means necessary.