bakhy

nobody seems interested in looking at the thing from the other perspective - why was it an evolutionary advantage for older people to develop this uncertainty-blindness? i would guess that perhaps with age the importance of making a decision rises, even if not the best decision. perhaps it's an evolutionary adaptation to reduce analysis-paralysis in developed adults and improve their self-sufficiency? in any case, it's interesting how we all jumped to "fixing" it. a cute reflection of the culture here.

the repeated usage of the phrase "my net worth" stings. i presume it's just a turn of phrase and does not really mean much, but it's ugly. you're worth more than any dollar amount! ;)

try to come up with more than one solution to a problem. don't marry the first idea.

i can't speak for the author, but my first thought was the speed. Delphi was almost as easy to develop as Visual Basic, but the result was fast. a native EXE, no big framework-dependencies.

so, the DAO contract is the only authority, and everything is on the blockchain, except when the collective decides it's not? you say "nothing changes", but something obviously would - "the attacker" would lose their money. and not because any smart contract decided so, but rather >1/2 of the involved participants.

of course, he's a thief and should not get the money, but maybe the DAO was flying a bit too high too quickly.

i can understand where you're coming from. i've felt exactly the same about Martin Shkreli. people just went crazy about him, and few asked how to change the system to not allow it. but still, even if the system is wrong, so is Shkreli.

no system can be perfect. even in pure math you have Gödel. in the ugly gray world of real life, of human societies, it can only be worse. unpredictable outcomes, grey areas,.. they are unavoidable. so i think we must do both - create systems which try to guarantee good order, and always complement them with a human touch. and that means personal moral responsibility, and a duty to think of more than just satisfying the dead letter of the law. furthermore, a system which would exactly codify morality is probably impossible, or even deadly for society. (just imagine what it means to have laws covering everything that is immoral... it would be the most extremely totalitarian state imaginable.) a lot will always be left to people themselves, to decide and to enforce in this way, through open public discussions, and their ugly brother, public blaming and shaming. it not even clear: should we even make a law against what Mr Thiel is doing? the answer does not seem so easy to me.

also, how could this discussion even take place if no one should judge the actions of Mr Thiel? what kind of abstract articles would we then be reading? "somebody somewhere did something, we can't say too much about what, so you don't figure out who it is"? :)

BTW, is it not kinda funny to defend a well known libertarian by proposing a stricter system? :)

perhaps this is off-topic, but what personally bugs me most, as a gay man, is that Mr Thiel can hold such a huge grudge for so long about being outed. is it so humiliating for you that other people know you're gay, Mr Thiel?

i must add a disclaimer, of course: i am strongly against outing people like that (barring some exceptions, like anti-gay politicians). it is wrong, and Gawker should be punished for it. but i would expect that Mr Thiel feels at least some relief that the secret is out. and that this would enable some degree of letting go, and that the whole thing would die down. but, no. instead, 10 years of litigation...

alternatively, Mr Thiel could just be prone to extreme grudges, and just generally can't let anything go (?)

> There will always be rich people.

Peter Thiel is not an automaton. he is a human being. he bears responsibility for his actions. he might not be doing anything illegal, but it is perfectly justified to expect more of people than merely following the letter of the law, and as for the rest, anything goes! it is particularly justified to expect more from such influential people like him. he bears, if not legal, then moral responsibility. and after all, laws did not spring out of Zeus' head or something, we defined them, and situations like this, and discussions that they instigate, can change those laws.

if Mr Thiel wants to raise journalistic integrity standards when it comes to outing people, then the right things to do would be something like opening a public discussion, advocating some change in the law, etc. or perhaps, if he must use litigation, then focusing on suing all media that out people recklessly in this way. that would be a way more admirable approach. but this is not what Mr Thiel is doing. he is instead attacking just Gawker, for >10 years now, supporting any suit against them, and to top it all of, he is doing it secretively.

the lesson the media are going to take away from this is not "we must behave morally", but rather, "we must be careful not to get any rich guy pissed at us". which is where these arguments about how Mr Thiel is hurting the freedom of the press are coming from.

Hangouts was horrible to me for just one reason - on the smartphone, it hid info on who is online right now.. perhaps this was designed to motivate us to send more messages, but it meant i could no longer easily know if someone might answer now, or if i better try sms/call/.. and then as of recently, Hangouts just fails to notify me of messages, or keeps re-notifying me of old ones, and now i barely use it any more.

Google+ had a similar design decision, when it showed (don't know if this changed) friend suggestions without indicating if those people actually use Google+, or if your adding them to a circle will just spam them to join a social network they don't (want to) use. it's understandable that Google might want to do these things to grow their platforms, but without tact and understanding for what the users really want, they're achieving the opposite.

Forgive me, but the website of DAO reminds me a bit of this one -> http://zombo.com/ :)

i don't know if i maybe missed something, but it does not seem like the inequality argument has been contested by anything in the text. in fact, the author states that in Japan, like elsewhere, despite a struggling economy, the rich are still getting richer. if all the other possible explanations do not work, then Japan is perhaps the best example of what Piketty wrote about.

the past-querying sounds a lot like reactive programming, doesn't it? you lay out an expression (and you would be typically using set/aggregate operations there as well) and the expression kinda just sits there quietly, accumulates events until a certain condition or threshold is reached, when it fires a signal further down the chain...

what bugs me is the possibility that one disaster, however unlikely, when it happens may render a wider area uninhabitable for a longer period of time. is this not the case?

and then, perhaps a bigger issue, waste management. just look at Germany [1], supposedly a role model country. please note that the New Scientist text is mostly about light waste, "just" 1000 years storage time. there's a committee trying to plan storage of highly radioactive waste - for 1 million years! we are a species of idiots. none of the plants generating that waste is going to give us a million years of power.

as others have mentioned, Fukushima could have been prevented. and Japan has also had accidents and cover-ups before [2]. all in all, it seems too risky.

and finally, what happened to Thorium plants? aren't they much much safer? or the breeder reactors, how are those coming along?

[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2075615-radioactive-was... [2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20263-japans-record-o...

some time ago, the definition of "trickle down" on wikipedia used to contain, in the first sentence, the statement that the goal is to achieve wealth distribution. the contradiction was too glaring, i presume ;) because, if so, then why not just give the money to the people? their spending will then inevitably reward and enrich those market actors that deserve it, leading to a much healthier market then one created by governments transferring money to arbitrary, politically connected capitalists.

ceterum censeo, basic income is the future!

"Makes precompilation and show error while coding." -- some parts of the web page may be in need of a little proofreading ;) but that's less relevant. keep up the good work!

obvious troll is obvious.

an example of the power of phrasing in journalism, perhaps? the title could have also been: "Reckless media sites serve malware to visitors".

it seems like the judge who made these preposterous claims stands to lose budget if these children had the right to council? which they should, of course, have.

> Weil is not just any immigration official. As an assistant chief immigration judge in EOIR’s Office of the Chief Immigration Judge — which sets and oversees policies for the nation’s 58 immigration courts — he is responsible for coordinating the Justice Department’s training of immigration judges.

a bit unnerving. why wouldn't some ad-tracking mechanism that's part of some apps simply collect everything it can and radio it back home?

btw, can this be considered a huge security plus for web apps? they can break out, but at least they have to put in some effort.

i personally would appreciate a security popup from the OS asking me if i want to give full access to an input to any app. otherwise, to each only his own, and the possibility of applying for global shortcuts perhaps...

absolutely wonderful! the list of projects on the site is definitely worth a visit. http://www.stupidhackathon.com/

i want to take my upvote away from this. seeing the title, i foolishly thought that the conference already took place, and just clicked before reading and seeing that the title is a lie. :/

thank you for the clarification! one issue still remains - a developer writing that software knows that it will end up in cars which will be sold. even if they will not sell them themselves, they are certainly in the know about the illegal practice. if not before, than at least when those cars start getting sold, the developer knows laws were broken. not blowing the whistle at that point must make the developer accessory to the crime. i think that is inescapable. or, should be..

your idea actually sounds more like the military ;) since, according to that vision, individual people nor their personal responsibility do not even exist there.

can a person really just knowingly take part in any illegal activity, and as long as they're not the only employee, the company is to blame and they are free? even if that were true, and i doubt it is, it would need immediate changing.

i think it is, but to some very limited extent. it is not desirable for soldiers to question commands too much. even the most human rights obeying, peace loving government typically does not want its soldiers to think too much. (i think that may even be part of the reason why they have a separate court system, no?)

although i would personally consider all of the above unethical to some degree, i think i could understand someone thinking differently about Facebook Free Basics, Stingray, and Red Star. someone might put more weight to giving the poor any "internet", than giving them proper, neutral internet. Stingrays are used by legitimate law enforcement agencies, although i don't know much about how and under what conditions. and Red Star, well, all of that is legal there and not complying with the Kim can cost NK citizens their heads, so i'd cut a lot of slack there.

but investing your work in a company which sells surveillance equipment to dictators is downright disgusting. people are being tortured and killed because their governments managed to track them down thanks to that company. that seems like complete moral ambivalence at work. even if one could have somehow rationalized enabling their own government to spy, upon finding out who the company sells to, they must quit. and perhaps also leak everything.

good point. although this actually crosses the line from "just unethical" to straight up "illegal", which makes the question perhaps less interesting. developers who wrote that code are accessories in crime. and the defense of "just following orders" might only be considered for soldiers, not for civilian workers.

60%? wow. people really don't put a high price on themselves.

totally unethical, i agree. the part about the investment really surprised me. do investors have a responsibility to study the legality of that which they are supporting with their capital?