avenius

I started reading slashdot around 2000-2001, being about 14 years old at the time. I would venture to say that slashdot and its community has been as educational (or even more) as school, and played a large part in my deciding to work in IT.

Since I never signed up for an account there (I was a kid and knew I had nothing to bring to the table), I never experienced the friend/foe system or participated in moderation. Still, the site has had an amazing impact on my life and given me an insight into topics I never would have learned about otherwise. Nowadays it feels HN has taken over, but I still feel a need to express my gratitude for both the site and the community.

I'm somewhat curious about the verification process here. Wouldn't this be a prime target for would-be blackmailers?

I've been gathering stories from a collection of prominent news sites for about a year, and apparently the media just loves writing about Trump. It's consistently been the most prominent keyword (in number / ratio of occurrances). So that's not necessarily the author's fault.

I think he's referring to the fact that you need a third-party application to perform maintenance, rather than have the functionality supplied in the OS.

So it scrapes a ton of data about people from public sources, and encourages them to give it access to their private data such as email as well.. What could possibly go wrong?

I've never quite understood how so many americans appear to oppose a communally paid healthcare system. It should be a win-win for everyone, right? Is it just a severe lack of empathy?

The fifth group must be the nihilists ;)

It seems to have seen widespread adoption in Norway already (probably due to the large and still growing vegetarian market). The non-cow options are all more expensive than cow milk, but that doesn't seem to make much of a difference.

Agreed, I've always considered "clean" to mean non-preprocessed food.

n=2

5 years here, focused mostly on the back and legs to ensure I don't get a permanent desk posture (and nothing makes me feel more powerful than a set of heavy deadlifts). The first two years I used to go 3-5 times a week, but lately I've settled into 2-3 times a week to simply maintain. No real goals, other than staying sufficiently fit. Trying to eat clean; A mostly vegetarian diet with a free pass for tuna.

Wes? ;)

Also, ditto - Prog and power metal seems to kickstart my brain and has often helped me out of nonproductive slumps.

Answering as a fellow Norwegian: I gladly pay my taxes - the beneficiaries of these taxes are the community as a whole, including myself. I don't have to worry about going bankrupt if I ever get any serious health issues, for instance. There's also the issue of social security, which not everyone is a fan of. But giving people a decent economic baseline / safety net should mean they e.g. won't have to resort to crime to stay afloat. It may also reduce tensions, although I can't say that for sure (some of my old friends get social security, and they're feeling disenfranchised due to a lack of real opportunities). I get the impression that some people think that taxation is basically money being stolen from them and being given to someone else - isn't that a somewhat gross misunderstanding?

It did - while the inner parts of the empire were quite peaceful, there were still conflicts along the outer borders. Since there haven't been any wars on US soil for ages, calling it Pax Americana seems alright to me.