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burgerson OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

> We just want to be with white people.

I don't know. If someone told me "I just want to be with white people", I would think they were racist. That said, the word racism definitely has multiple and nuanced meanings at this point, so it could be more a part of my interpretation than the more established official definition.

burgerson OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

I'm not sure what part of my link talked about being white.

burgerson OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

No, I was just trying to point out how racist you sound. Saying things like "my white friends"? Seriously? I now just realized that you are a very stereotyping person and exactly the kind of person that makes these okCupid releases dangerous. Yikes.

burgerson OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

So I guess the KKK isn't racist. Interesting...

> "We're not racists," Chambers told CNN Monday. "We just want to be with white people. If that's a crime, then I don't know. It's all right to be black and Latino and proud, but you can't be white and proud. I don't understand it."

http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/12/a-kinder-gentler-k...

burgerson OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

> people in the general public will use this kind of thing to say stuff like, "I read online that they did this study about Latino men and it said that they all think black women are ugly".

Maybe you should go back and read what I wrote one more time. I said that "people in the general public", not "I think that".

1. I know this is pseudo science so I don't read anything into it. 2. Plenty of people have no experience with data science and do not know the difference between causation and correlation.

Can you do me a favor, and stop projecting your issues with political correctness onto me? I'm sorry you've had your difficulties with it in the past, but my comments have nothing at all to do with the topics making me uncomfortable. It's because as a society as a whole, there are many people that will use this type of information to spread hate. If okCupid or anyone else is going to do it, they need to release all of their data publicly at the same time so that there can be a complete and two sided discussion with all the data available.

Lastly...

> because all of the black, latino, asian guys i know talk about this stuff openly. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=I%20Have%20Bl...

burgerson OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

This has nothing to do with my "fantasyland" or wanting everyone to be equal. Its about making racial and other generalizations without publishing the full data with it. Racial and gender generalizations are dangerous things for a society. If you are going to go down the road of pointing out these things, you need to do it with extra caution and transparency.

burgerson OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

No, I think if they are going to make the generalizations, they need to publish the data they used to make those generalizations. Its the fact that okCupids data is private and proprietary combined with the publishing of correlations that is unethical.

burgerson OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

So while its fun to play around with data, these are not real insights. The very idea that they can think some metric you've gathered via an online app can determine whether someone finds someone else attractive is goofy. But then publicly publishing that narrative, which is straight up pseudo science, is dangerous as people in the general public will use this kind of thing to say stuff like, "I read online that they did this study about Latino men and it said that they all think black women are ugly".

Grow up and take some responsibility for the world around you.

burgerson OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

When you publicly disclose the results, without any way for the data to be peer reviewed? Absolutely.

burgerson OkCupid’s Unblushing Analyst of Attraction

The spookiest thing is not the data or the experiments, but the off the cuff conclusions.

For example: > As a group, for instance, Latino men rated Latinas as 13 percent more attractive than the average for the site, while they rated African-American women 25 percent less attractive.

That is an insane generalization going on.

What metric are we using to determine this? Is it possible that people who tend to participate in the rating of the looks of potential mates are more inclined to align with race? Not purely Latino men. Which is an enormous initial generalization to be making at the outset.

> Witness the actions of 35-year-old heterosexual men on OkCupid. These men typically search for women between the ages of 24 and 40, Mr. Rudder reports, yet in practice they rarely contact anyone over 29.

Again on this one, was age the only possible metric that caused the under 30 to be contacted more by 35 year old men? There isn't anything else that might be different about an under 30 profile that causes more communication to occur?

This is the actual scary stuff to be publicly releasing as real science. Just as the general public is ill informed about the experiments going on, they are also not aware of what metrics are used to determine these results. In my experience, many of these metrics are not as concrete as the appear and full of pushing the data to fit a narrative etc.

Combine that with the fact that most of this data is proprietary and private with no way to be peer reviewed. Dangerous stuff.

burgerson If you want to start a startup, go work for someone else

Not to speak for the comment you are replying to, but in my experience it likely means that those that worried more about the startup than themselves ended up worse off than those that looked out for there own best interests first.

burgerson Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

> even if your company isn’t tech-heavy (such as Dinnr).

I feel like this would be a giant red flag to me. You are essentially a logistics startup, and you believe this is not "tech-heavy". Logistics is likely one of the most complicated tech-heavy problems being solved right now.

Things like pricing(30% margins in grocery food sounds very high), recommendations etc. Was there ever a way for food bloggers to have their recipes automatically pulled into Dinnr for readers to purchase?

This is almost a 100% tech company. I wonder how much of underestimating that, combined with the founders possible(I'm guessing) lack of tech knowledge contributed to the failure.

burgerson Why Amazon Has No Profits and Why It Works

It isn't a ponzi scheme because Amazon isn't dependent on new share purchases to keep running. It is a fully functioning operation that is in the black. It just isn't generating any real profits above its costs.

Amazon is worth money right now. Just like a lawn mower doesn't turn a profit on its own, but it is still worth something.

In the long term view, which Amazon definitely takes, this current process is just there to fund the final business. Which is providing infrastructure. It uses its current operations as a way to fund the build out of that infrastructure. The future of Amazon, in my opinion, is not selling books etc, but providing someone with the infrastructure to sell books. Its using its current book sales etc to fund that build out.

burgerson American Horror, Ivy League Edition

So were political activists and other people "forced" to go to the Gulag? Or, like US citizens who live in poverty for being artists, did they "choose" to do something the government did not want and faced a punishment for it?

burgerson American Horror, Ivy League Edition

But maybe people who ended up in the Gulag were because they chose not to go along with what the state wanted them to do? It seems quite obvious that the United States strongly discourages going into any other field outside of economics. That is by far the easiest low risk high income path a person can take in the US. So by becoming an artist, you are going against the framework set up by US society to convince you to go into finance. That's why there are so many punishments and risks involved. Just like the Gulag was set up to convince people to follow the framework set up by the Soviets.

14,000+ people were murdered in the US. Many of those people died simply because they had a low enough ratio of money to others to force them to live in a dangerous place. Not because of any other reason than having less money that others.

burgerson American Horror, Ivy League Edition

Well, if you read the article, you would have read about two students, 1 went to Dartmouth and the other went to Yale. The former worked at a bar, if I remember correctly and the latter worked at the airport. Neither graduated with economic degrees. ;)

All jokes aside, indeed when you live in a country that hands our very severe punishments(just look up the murder rate in less expensive neighborhoods etc) for having less money than someone else. Real estate is directly tied to the amount of money you have compared to others so could explain how that analogy is that far off?

If someone lived in New York City, they might have to trade quite a bit of safety in neighborhood for having a less profitable degree than someone who graduated with an economics degree. So indeed US society hands out a weighted lottery about getting murdered based upon how much money you make, even at middle class levels.

burgerson American Horror, Ivy League Edition

You may want to read what I wrote one more time. I did not say that those outside of finance deal with lack of food, safety and health. I stated that if one has less money than someone else, they are much more likely to have to deal with things like being assaulted or killed or going without enough to eat etc.

So it just seems obvious that if you don't want to deal with these punishments for finding yourself with less money than 50 to 60 percent of the population, you would go into finance as it gives you the best chances of having more money than most and therefore dealing with less, if any, of the punishments US society hands out for having less money than others.

burgerson American Horror, Ivy League Edition

That's kind of my point. How is forcing that indie developer in live in Alaska, much different from the Soviets shipping someone off to Siberia because they didn't get with the plan?

Finance will continue to grow as the preferred choice of those who want to avoid being punished by US society and forced live in Alaska or not have enough to eat or a safe place to live.

burgerson American Horror, Ivy League Edition

> Economics, conversely, is as popular as beer, topping all majors at Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton and Penn. In what Deresiewicz calls “a stunning convergence,” it was the top major at 26 of the nation’s top 40 universities and colleges.

In a society that sets up severe and aggressive punishments for having less money than someone else, why would anyone go into any other field? Only the masochists and the selfless will be outside the world of finance soon.

burgerson IKEA Channels Apple in a Hilarious Ad for Its New Catalog ‘Bookbook’

I don't know if this is as much a mock ad against a particular company(those are the ones that typically come off petty) and more about trying to relay to the consumer there is more to life than a touchscreen device.

This ties into IKEAs brand perfectly. The more you care about the "Real World" the more likely you are to spend time(and money) decorating and enhancing your surroundings, like your home.

It's not so much a mock ad as much as it's reinforcing the value proposition of what IKEA brings to the consumer. The ability to enhance the real world. It does so via proxy by reinforcing the value proposition of the real world in general.

Fantastic marketing.

burgerson The unstoppable TI-84 Plus: An outdated calculator still holds a monopoly

> and also a tool they can bring in during their most important exam.

This is the most important part. Cheating is probably the primary reason these are used and not computers/smartphones etc. That is their niche. Test taking. With that, if you change the form factor etc, it becomes more difficult for test administers to recognize etc, and more power allows for programs that can be more "creative" and how they find answers to problems.

The tool is a perfect reflection of being built for a very particular market.

burgerson The Unexotic Underclass

"Make something people with money want." /FTFY

burgerson The Unexotic Underclass

I can sum this up so very simply. The way to make the most money is to get as close to money as possible. Hence why finance is such a lucrative career. We are seeing the obvious flaws of capitalism now that capital is no longer tied to low skill labor for manufacturing.

Want to make a ton of money 1 year from today and have good credit? Spend your days with an MLS subscription finding under-priced homes to flip in a couple weeks. You'll be a millionaire in a year I guarantee it.

Want to help single mothers for the rest of you life? You'll barely get by, I guarantee it.

Why? Because its further from a transaction. Nothing more, nothing less.

EDIT: I'd love it if the person who down voted me would explain why so much money is flowing into blockchains. You don't think that has anything to do with how close it is to the transaction?

burgerson Uber to ignore German ban despite being ruled 'illegal'

I made an earlier comment about that perception you have. You are likely and upper class US citizen who looks down on things like taxis and the bus. If "providing value" means playing into stereotypes, then I guess you are correct. I also am an US Citizen, born and raised, and your comments make be believe that you are a bigot against the lower classes and see them as dirty. Or maybe your issue is that there are too many non whites driving taxis. I can assure you that I have stated my beliefs accurately.

As a side note, the term "value" has been so overused at this point that when people use it I tend to think they are idealists and I don't take their comments as seriously as if they had not used the term.

burgerson Uber to ignore German ban despite being ruled 'illegal'

Interesting, so you are more of the, I use self checkout because I'd rather not deal with a person type. That is definitely another part of how Uber is successful. For example having to think about tipping etc.

burgerson Uber to ignore German ban despite being ruled 'illegal'

> The average taxi driver wouldn't make it as an Uber driver, only the superior drivers can sustain a 4.6+ rating.

Then why is that many taxi drivers drive for Uber as well? Where are you getting these numbers? Or are you maybe just falling for marketing?

Also, in NYC and SF plenty of people rent out their account to other drivers. People sign up for Uber and never drive a single passenger so the rating is really not much more than a rented token in some cases.

burgerson Uber to ignore German ban despite being ruled 'illegal'

This is absolutely untrue. I have taken taxis very often in many US cities including SF while I lived in the Bay Area. Many drivers drive for both taxi services and Uber depending on the day. How is the same exact driver suddenly dangerous in a taxi as opposed to his own car hailed via a smartphone app?

burgerson Uber to ignore German ban despite being ruled 'illegal'

In the US especially, automobiles are a symbol of economic status. I have not driven for the majority of my adult life and when people discover this they often think I am poor, lower class or lost my license due to drinking and driving etc. This extends to the usage of public transit and taxis. Uber, because it requires an expensive smart phone, balances that because the smart phone is also symbol of economic status. Launching as a premium product before UberX helped as well.

So using Uber is seen as "choosing" not to drive where as using public transit or a taxi is seen as "no being capable" of driving.

Its not that its any better(or worse) than a taxi or a private car you can call in most cities.

burgerson Show HN: The Discographer – I built Songkick/Bandsintown for new album releases

Partly, because I'm disappointed I won't be able to try it, and partly out of curiosity, what was the reason for not just making this an HTML5 web app? Was there some functionality you couldn't get from Web APIs?

burgerson Google 'discourages' users of old browsers

I'm not sure what the possibilities of your particular system are, but GNU/Linux systems, i my opinion, do a a fantastic job of letting all kinds of systems use the latest and greatest browsers. I remember running Debian on a tangerine clamshell iBook a couple years ago.

https://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc

Looks like even the latest Debian 7 is supported.

https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/powerpc/release-notes