bronbron

> Starting in the ’80s, productivity gains were no longer shared with workers.

Has anyone really looked into why this is? It's easy to say 'lol greed' and be done with it, but it seems silly to presume that people were any less greedy in the 60's and 70's.

'Globalization' might make a little bit of sense as to why individual companies might pay relatively less taxes to the US government, but I'd need more context than that before I'd be willing to accept globalization as the answer to why production gains aren't really being shared with workers anymore.

If the answer is that collective bargaining has been getting less and less effective over time, why is that?

Although, that has its own drawbacks! I got used to google maps telling me about service changes on the subway (it's pretty good about warning about planned service changes), and I found myself getting angry at maps when I found out the PATH had a planned service change that maps didn't warn me about.

Unreasonable, yes, I know - but something worth sharing I thought, since if you get into the realm of "transportation data" it's kinda gotta be all-or-nothing, I think.

What does that have anything to do with what I said?

Are you seriously saying that Zynga can't follow the same line of reasoning that Facebook did in trying to acquire Snapchat? Or did you just go off on a tangent for no reason?

It's not at all corp speak... are you serious?

It's the same idea behind Facebook trying to buy Snapchat. Facebook realizes another team is much more innovative & successful than them in attracting young users, so they try and spend money to acquire that talent and invest in that team's innovative ability (pay $3B now to realize >$3B revenue in the future).

> This is what happens when you raise taxes to absurd levels

Wouldn't any amount above 0% be reason for a company to seek tax havens? With revenues in the billions, it seems like even a 1% tax rate would be more expensive than the cost of relocating that money.

The independent contractor status screws them on all sorts of other things (e.g. health insurance), but I'm pretty sure auto insurance is the responsibility of the taxi company.

What usually happens is people decide to upgrade everything all at once, since they're investing the time anyway. So they upgrade to Ruby 2, Rails 4, JQuery 2, etc. all at once. Since the big driver was to upgrade Rails initially, Rails becomes the focal point of all the once-deprecated-now-removed errors that occur.

That being said, upgrading from Rails 2 -> 3 was pretty annoying.

It's interesting watching this, because it seems inevitable that Uber will become exactly like the service it was meant to compete with: the Taxi industry.

The whole saga has good, bad, and meh elements to all of it.

It's good that the question of auto insurance is coming up. I imagine that many of these drivers are painfully unaware that they are in serious insurance limbo. If someone's a de facto Uber employee, then yeah, Uber should pay for damages that the driver causes. It's definitely an exaggeration to say that Uber will "leave a trail of bodies in the street", but it's also unfair that the victim gets screwed here (because there's no chance in hell the driver's personal insurance will cover this).

It sucks that the odds are so stacked against them for providing (what at least used to be, I rarely use them nowadays) a good service. I remember being in SF a couple years back and trying to hail a cab for 30 minutes before getting an Uber in ~5 minutes. It was really shitty, and Uber really came through in the end. I was glad to pay the price difference.

Regardless of what happens, there's a lot of interesting ideas here that hopefully get noticed. Surge pricing's an interesting idea. Whereas taxis sacrifice reliability for relatively stable pricing, I'm glad there's a competing service that sacrifices stable pricing for reliability. It lets you make the decision about which is more important, and I'm sure we've all been in situations where getting somewhere quickly was worth the extra money.

Eh, it just gets grating after awhile. Inboxes are cluttered enough already without getting 10+ emails a day from recruiters, you know?

It's also annoying to try and hit "unsubscribe" from a mailing list only to find out "unsubscribe" does nothing.

Maybe I'm missing something, but..

Doesn't this basically already happen? I would imagine retail space along main thoroughfares (e.g. "Main street" or space right next to a very popular highway exit) is substantially more expensive than one that sees 5 cars a day. Retailers already basically know what route you're likely to be taking - the one that most other people take.

Granted they don't physically stop your car and ask if you would like Krispy Kremes, but it seems like that bidding war could get expensive quickly - now Krispy Kreme has to compete for retail space along Main street, and they also have to bid against Dunkin Donuts/etc. in the traffic routing business. Further, If Krispy Kreme is routing 25% of all traffic past their store, then the municipality in question either has to:

a) Outlaw this

b) Add additional roads, etc. to the road near Krispy Kreme, thus making this road the new "Main street" anyway. It'd drive up the cost of that real estate where Krispy Kreme is.

All in all, I just don't see it being economically viable for anyone.

> It's immoral for a man to compete in the WNBA because the league disallows it. Not because there's something cosmically immoral about men and women competing in general, and not because there's something cosmically immoral about competing with someone who feels intimidated because you're more skilled than they are.

The league disallows it because we as a society think it's wrong to force women to compete against men in basketball. If you sneaked onto a WNBA team people would call you a dirtbag, and not just because "the league disallows it".

> However, if a woman enters a public (or private!) space and demands men leave because she feels intimidated, that's wrong, too. And for different (and more relevant) reasons.

That's not what's happening here.

> There's nothing wrong with being proud of being Jewish, White, or Asian, despite those being historically successful groups.

That's the spirit! See you at the next Klan rally.

> Yes, young Whites are shamed for expressing the same pride that everyone else gets to express, and that is precisely what forces "White pride" organization underground, turning them into seething pits of Hell like Stormfront.

Because it's a little too close gloating. The last 2000 years of history are pretty much summed up by "not a property-owning white-ish male? Sucks."

Similarly, LeBron can be super proud of the fact that he's probably the Michael Jordan of this era. That doesn't mean people won't give him shit when he starts talking about how he's the greatest at a press meeting.

> Sure, it'd get old. But that doesn't mean women should be shamed for talking about how great it is to be a woman. Let them be proud of who they are. Leave if you want; ignore it if you can't.

That's exactly what women are doing in the tech industry. They're leaving. Or just not entering at all. It's not a good thing.

> Does the fact that a guy making $8.50 an hour might have an internet connection mean that you can't jibber-jabber about the stock market (or about buying yachts) online?

No, it means maybe you shouldn't wonder why that guy doesn't want to visit your website or respond to your comments.

Eh, I dunno. I'm definitely not one of those people whose champion cause is gender issues, and to be totally honest I rarely even think about it much. My general philosophy is "be professional", not "lol check ur privilege." That being said, I think you're off here.

> If women tend to be intimidated by head-to-head competition (of any type) with a man, it doesn't mean it's wrong or immoral for a man to compete head-to-head with a woman.

Err, it sure is when men have an obvious advantage. This is why we don't allow men to play in the WNBA. When men don't have an obvious advantage (e.g. competing for grades in class), you're absolutely right. Men definitely have an advantage in tech right now. You can argue whether that's innate or cultural, but it's kinda hard to argue the premise.

> If women tend to be intimidated when a muscular male stranger is in their presence, it doesn't mean it's wrong or immoral to be a muscular man in the presence of a woman.

Your actions are immoral, your mere existence never is. It's about empathy. No one's ever going to say you're wrong for being a muscular man, but people will think you're either insensitive or super oblivious if you're a huge guy wearing a hoodie walking 6 inches behind a small 105 pound woman at night in an alley.

> Likewise, if women tend to be intimidated when men use language that expresses pride in their manhood, it doesn't mean it's wrong for boys or men to use language that expresses pride in their manhood.

Come on: first of all replace "man/men" with "white" and see why your statement sounds a little ridiculous.

Second of all, no one wants to hear that shit either way. If I have to listen to a group of women talk about how great it is to be a woman, I'm similarly going to either leave the conversation or say "what the fuck?". Wouldn't you?

That shit gets old real fast if you're on the outer circle.

> To all the boys and young men who are barraged daily with messages scolding them (or worse) for using language that implies they're male: Keep your chin up. These people want to break you down, not lift anyone else up.

Truthfully, nobody really gives a shit what anyone has to say. It's more about who you say it around. If you wanna jibber-jabber about 401Ks or real estate investment with your bros, then go nuts. Maybe keep that talk to a minimum when you're around the guy making $8.50 an hour though, you know?

It's just about sensitivity. Bro.

> In another era, the captains of industry would have said, “OK, our workers live here, our factory is there; let’s encourage, enforce, and subsidize the improvement of public transit.”

Uh, what?

This is kind of a silly point, but I think it exemplifies how misplaced all this tension is.

For example, mayor LaGuardia put a TON of work into forcing the privately owned transit lines to become a public good in NYC. The "captains of industry" didn't improve public transportation - they just started their own transportation companies. It took a lot of hard work by a lot of great government officials for the NYC subway to become the awesome service that it is today (incoming jokes about the L train).

The city of San Francisco's biggest enemy in this whole "nouveau riche" problem is the city of San Francisco. But everyone's too busy cuttin' each other's throats to realize that.

Hey, yet again, citizens arguing at each other instead of focusing their anger towards the government.

If the bay area had decent public transportation, these buses wouldn't exist.

You know how google employees from Westchester get to work in Chelsea? They take the train + subway. Because it isn't completely terrible.

That being said, this guy is obviously doing himself or google no favors and looks like a douche.

Why? Even on longer train rides (3+ days) I've never wished that I was carrying more than a book or two at most. A novel or two of adequate length and complexity is more than enough, unless you plan to be reading literally the entire time.

Sure, maybe an e-reader is superior for those 14-day treks, but the vast majority of people don't make those kinds of trips anymore considering that most of the world is reachable within a day at most.

Hackathons in general should be viewed with a serious amount of skepticism because it mostly is, as Liu notes, a way to get you to work for a company for (basically) free.

That being said, this sounds above-and-beyond scummy based on the information provided. The lack of transparency and the fact that the grand-prize winner worked at Salesforce for 9 years is a seriously questionable combination.

Aside from apologizing profusely, though, I don't know what Salesforce does here. It'd be pretty mean to yank the guy's prize (and would only lend credence to the conspiracy argument), but doing nothing or promising to "do better in the future" will certainly be a PR hit for Salesforce both in terms of recruiting and future activities sponsored by them.

They're in a tough spot, though I don't really pity them since it was their own doing.

More likely SNP stands for single nucleotide polymorphism, usually pronounced "snip", so "snipedia" is probably more apt.

Or maybe I'm totally wrong.

Programming's not a panacea for everyone's problems, you know?

I mean, I get that you're just coming from a place of decency and trying to help, but suppose tomorrow every unemployed person decides to become a programmer - does that really help? Or does it just make the market for programmers worse?

I get that you're trying to help, but there are systemic problems to be resolved here.

> If you want to work, the advertised technology enables you to work

You want to work at your kid's soccer game? During a date? During happy hour?

If the campaign was, "Work from home easily one day a week" this blog post wouldn't exist. The debate here has nothing to do with remote work as a concept. Many people have a problem with work-life balance and it's insensitive at best and dystopian at worst for Microsoft to basically say, "Hey, why aren't you working while your date's in the bathroom?"

DHH's arguing that you're missing the very important 4th option here:

4) "Sorry, I'm busy with other things tonight."

Um, why? It's likely that their trip spanned several countries because the animals people are typically interested are usually spread out across several countries. I would wager that most people going on Safari end up visiting multiple countries, though that's a hunch and not a citation.

If I'm going to visit the UK, France, Switzerland, and Germany, I'm going to tell people I went to Europe.

I dunno, I (and I would suspect many others) have the same tendency when reading PDFs - if it's more than 1 page, I skim to the end then go back up, much like I would on a paper document.

Are you citing something or just generalizing from what you've seen?

> I think that a single page resume especially in a technical field is difficult if you want to have projects, jobs, schooling etc all included.

Not really - I think we have a tendency to, as the article notes, want to list every single thing just incase they find it relevant. They probably won't, and it's probably unimportant to the position.

To me, having a multi-page resume is usually an indicator that you're mass-applying (which you should, no doubt) and can't be bothered to tailor the resume to the position you're applying for (which is bad).

> Europe has largely solved this problem, and using your antiquated American credit card in Europe is not only difficult, but even if possible will elicit crazy looks.

Wait what does Europe do? Just genuinely curious, and a cursory google search didn't return anything.

>Because this isn't twitter, there is no character/word limit so I consider taking a little extra room to help the reader understand where I'm coming from to be a good use of available comms bandwidth.

Similarly stereotypical old people consider it to be a good use of time to tell extremely rambling stories that explain the context of everything. Taking the time to couch everything in "I think" or making dead sure everyone knows it's "just your opinion" reminds me of Grandpa Simpson explaining that onions were the style at the time - totally inconsequential information.

> Because I prefer to be accurately understood in non-academic contexts too.

Do you really worry that most people misunderstand you without those qualifiers? Are you worried about every possible misinterpretation of your sentences?

> My point is that if it looks like I'm presenting something as fact when that was not my intention then I have failed to communicate properly, and you unnecessarily think I'm full of shit.

Solved by a three word clarification on the off-chance someone misunderstands you. Doesn't happen nearly as often as you think (please don't black swan me).

Opinions can be "full of shit" too. For example, I think people opposed to same-sex marriage are full of shit. You're not really dodging that bullet just by saying "Hey that's just my opinion!!!!"

> Here you make the case for me... Maybe worrying about how I sound in this way is a neurotic issue...

It sounds a little neurotic. It's pretty clear it's just my opinion - people vary in their definition of "tedious". Some people enjoy knitting, I find it tedious. If I say "knitting is tedious", one can assume that should not be translated as "it is an objective fact that knitting is tedious."

> So to avoid problems with the reliability of my source, I should just not let anyone know what the source is? Basically "trust me, I'm from the Internet, we know these things"?

Depends on the situation. If you're saying the median income in Greece is $32k/yr, then yeah, I want your source. If you're telling me, "Vaccines are bad", it really doesn't matter what your source is.

Honestly ask yourself (this is rhetorical, by the way, because there's naturally going to be a disconnect between typed and real answers): if a study came out tomorrow saying "solid proof that children raised by same-sex couples are substantially worse off", would it change your opinion? Would you read it and think "Well, alright, I guess maybe same-sex couples shouldn't get married"?

> EXACTLY. I don;t see how pointing the that one study is worse than just stating the fact/opinion...

Because you're selectively using sources to deceive people, if it's intentional. It's a really powerful lie of omission.

> incontrovertible truth

What's an incontrovertible truth? Careful we don't side track into an argument about incompleteness.

> the writer either needs to make a little effort to not be misunderstood or accept that some will completely misjudge where they are coming from (and of those two options I generally choose the first, you presumably prefer the latter approach).

My point being that people can always misjudge where you're coming from, no matter what you say. In academic discussions and in didactic discourse, it's important to make sure your audience understands you. HN posts are overwhelmingly persuasive arguments (we're having one now, btw), and you're diluting your message by sounding unsure of yourself.

> Obvious to you, and me for that matter, but obviously not obvious to everyone or this sub-thread would not exist.

Why sacrifice conciseness to try and alleviate every misunderstanding? Language is not a perfect communication tool - you'll talk yourself dizzy trying to catch every edge case and possible interpretation.

> Every one in this threat seems to be well enough versed on English that a specific language barrier isn't an issue, but there are probably people for whom English is a third or forth language: the chance of them seeing as obvious everything that we pick out as obvious is going to be lower than for those with more practise at the language.

Great! So we're doing them a great service by giving them practice in reading context.

> It is not about conviction, it is about accurately displaying the source and potential veracity of the information being presented.

Why? This isn't an academic discussion. If it looks like you're presenting something as a fact and I think you're full of shit, I'll ask for a clarification. Much like the poster did with the "[citation needed]". The OP's message remains easy to read, and the sub-poster got the clarification they were looking for.

> I couch my opinions so it doesn't look like I'm stating a commonly known fact instead of something I've supposed. Of course where I'm pretty damn sure what I'm stating is verifiable fact I'll not bother adding the extra words, but if you always assume you are correct and write in a style that suggests such, then you may be one of those people! Adding a few extra words to tell the reader this extra information about the (potential) quality of the information you are about to impart is useful IMO. Be as fine grained as you like too: somewhere between "I think that" and "I know" is "It is my understanding that..." and so on.

You're sacrificing conciseness for a very weak attempt at clarity. It's incredibly tedious to read someone's opinion piece that says "It's my opinion that vaccines are dangerous. I think that X. I believe that Y. I am of the opinion that Z." It makes your message incredibly boring and unpersuasive.

Further, trying to turn this into an academic discussion brings into question all the issues academic discussions engender. How reliable is your source? Have you done the appropriate background reading? If you link a study that says "vaccines are bad" but there are 300 other studies that say "vaccines are good", are you really being objective?

And then of course we can get into some really stupid semantic debates, since we're arguing about semantics anyway - what's the cutoff? If I say "the barn is red", do you want spectroscopy results?

That sounds repetitive and kind of annoying to read. It's usually obvious from context what's opinion and what's not, and you can always ask for clarification in those rarer instances. For example, it's pretty obvious the OP is stating opinion.

You don't need to couch your opinions with "I think" or "It's my opinion that". Have some conviction.

Ah, I hadn't even considered that - I just remember reading a few articles about their projects but it didn't occur to me that it might be complete vaporware.

Man, the worst part is that Intellectual Ventures Lab works on some really cool stuff. Maybe a little impractical, but really cool and innovative nonetheless.

I'd totally go work for them if they weren't backed by one of the worst corporations on the planet.

There's an entire section on the use of antibiotics in agriculture.