Hacker News Reader

guard-of-terraon Women rise through the ranks of IT more rapidly than men

More like used to by. Why climb ladders when you can change jobs going up every time?

guard-of-terraon Women rise through the ranks of IT more rapidly than men

As if getting into management was an universal desire.

guard-of-terraon Russia's sacred myths

But it's not Russian nationalism, it's pan-sovietism.

guard-of-terraon Russia's sacred myths

...but it's a Soviet myth, not a Russian one. Unfortunately there's not too much people who feel the difference.

guard-of-terraon Project Cybersyn: Socialism Through Cybernetics

Norway and China beg to differ. People argue that whole EU is socialist these days, and some of countries are quite successful.

guard-of-terraon Project Cybersyn: Socialism Through Cybernetics

Isn't fighting socialism (in 2016) a huge straw man by itself?

Socialist countries has all kinds of trajectories, as capitalist ones do. Moreover there's no capitalist and socialist countries anymore but a spectrum of economic regimes.

guard-of-terraon Project Cybersyn: Socialism Through Cybernetics

In the Memorial in Santiago de Chile there's a stand about people who had to flee to other countries after the coup. They're all over the map.

guard-of-terraon Project Cybersyn: Socialism Through Cybernetics

To achieve that, they

...tortured people by thousands, threw the least desirable into the sea from helicopters.

That's not becoming cool irregardless of how many positively sounding weasel words you put around "coup" and negatively sounding ones around "Allende".

guard-of-terraon Inside the Former US Embassy in Tehran, Iran (2015)

I don't think so. With their half-life they'll never be able to overrun much of the world. And thing is, we'll never know now. It's your opinion vs my opinion.

guard-of-terraon I stopped contributing to stackoverflow, but it's not declining

They actually give you 101 points on every new site if you're a proven user, which lets you comment.

guard-of-terraon Inside the Former US Embassy in Tehran, Iran (2015)

If I'm not mistaken, neither late (that is post-Stalin) USSR nor its client states (this excludes N.Korea and China) did the kind of shit that USA-backed Pinochet did.

Like throwing people in the sea, torturing civians by thousands, bombing presidential palace. The world was becoming a safer place, even on the wrong side of Iron Curtain, but this Chile thing was really a step backward. The guy was caught in UK and held behind bars for the rest of his life for a reason.

Nope, I don't understand. What's the use of liberty and democracy when you end up worse than commies?

guard-of-terraon Inside the Former US Embassy in Tehran, Iran (2015)

But they didn't and they couldn't.

However, what do your ideals of democracy worth when you overthrew democratic regimes?

guard-of-terraon Inside the Former US Embassy in Tehran, Iran (2015)

> how can you possibly judge actions in the 50s by what surprised everyone in the 80s

The thing is, your ends don't justify your means. It was Stalin's dogma and boy was he wrong. You can't justify crimes with "or what would have happened". The fall of communism just makes that apparent.

guard-of-terraon Inside the Former US Embassy in Tehran, Iran (2015)

It's now obvious that the spread of communism was a straw man. It didn't turn out viable after all.

Torturing or killing people in the name of straw man containment doesn't sound as a valid excuse anymore.

> legitimate-looking takeover that they had so successfully executed in Eastern Europe before everyone realized what was happening.

This is plain false. Takeover of Eastern Europe was a result of USSR winning the war that Germany lost. It was arranged so that USSR gets Eastern Europe that it has already took. Everybody realized what was happening.

Don't see how it could happen in Iran, much less how post-communist Iran would be worse these days than jihadist nuclear Iran you now have.

guard-of-terraon KDE 2 Screenshots (2000-2002)

It goes great length towards not having address bar or anything to type them in.

guard-of-terraon Sweden's Military Recruitment Problem

I wonder how "being selected for mandatory service" works. You are rewarded for being fit and healthy by marching platzes without money without sex without life?

Why less fit and healthy hedonistically enjoy?

guard-of-terraon The Fantastic World of Professor Tolkien (1956)

...and Tolkien wasn't really translated or available to Russian up until late 80s, but when the Professor finally arived he sparked spectacular amount of activity in Russian-speaking fandom.

guard-of-terraon The Fantastic World of Professor Tolkien (1956)

It's only boring when done wrong. But so is any plot.

guard-of-terraon Roma Gypsies flee to California after Europe turns more hostile

> families with children are allowed to live in circumstances that would immediately lead to an intervention from the social agencies if they were not Roma

That's totally baffles me every time. Let real degenerates do whatever they please, but terrorize middle class families? That's what "social agencies" seem to do everywhere.

guard-of-terraon Roma Gypsies flee to California after Europe turns more hostile

What do you think, what specific demographic group in france is most visible in antisemitic sentiment, defacing of Jewish cultural sites and hate crime against Jews?

guard-of-terraon Roma Gypsies flee to California after Europe turns more hostile

It's a cultural difference. Roma have all the freedom and obligation of adjusting their culture and fitting in, but they don't do it, do they?

You can't change your skin color and is not responsible for it and should wear it proudly, but you can definitely fix your culture, AND THEN wear it proudly.

guard-of-terraon Roma Gypsies flee to California after Europe turns more hostile

If Americans start to come to other countries and behave obnoxiously, those countries definitely have rights to kick them out and prevent any more americans from coming.

guard-of-terraon Roma Gypsies flee to California after Europe turns more hostile

“There’s a lot of prejudice against Roma in almost every country in Europe,”

For example, I've seen a few of them around ticket machines in Bologna railway station, Italy - trying to extract some forgotten change from the machines or harrass it off passengers.

Can I call this not prejudice but actually a mature judice? 'cause I've never seen anybody else do it.

You get to have prejudices when you behave like that.

guard-of-terraon Google Trips is a killer travel app for the modern tourist

Doesn't make sense to repeat it multiple times out, and you definitely could crowd source that kind of info if the mapping wasn't usurped by opaque Google not interested in that.

guard-of-terraon Google Trips is a killer travel app for the modern tourist

Sounds totally like a promotional piece.

Count "It's recommended that you check opening hours before visiting." That's how you do UX these days?

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with skyscanner, maps.me, tripadvisor and booking (they have crappy UI tho, check alternatives in countries where they're viable).

guard-of-terraon Tech Talent: How the UK lost six potential titans

Last.fm is still an amazing resource thanks to its listening statistics that I participate in.

guard-of-terraon Norway plans to cull more than two-thirds of its wolf population

It's weird that they have just 70 wolves in such a huge country. Heck, how could they even count them when I would expect them to roam freely from Finland and Murmansk and back. Wasn't Norway mostly huge wilderness actually?

guard-of-terraon The Real-Life Plan to Drain the Mediterranean and Merge Africa and Europe

There's no reason why the language barrier will be there in Italy but not in Ukraine. Will definitely not affect offshore devs coming on your turf (like with Poland, which imports a lot of Ukrainian and Russian IT workforce).

If London and Zurich can afford IT consultancies, why not Italy? 'cause I've not heard of those.

WRT "south dragging Italy down", I actually don't think this is true. I think it's more like an excuse.

guard-of-terraon The Real-Life Plan to Drain the Mediterranean and Merge Africa and Europe

I wonder why I don't know any IT consulting giants in Italy or Spain.

I mean, climate is awesome and prices are lower than in Switzerland or UK where many of those are located, and quality of life is much better than in Poland or Ukraine where more of them are located. Where's your IT consulting? Maybe you ought to remove a few roadblocks for them? I'll be the first one to move to Italy and pay taxes there if provided with workplace and visa.

guard-of-terraon The Real-Life Plan to Drain the Mediterranean and Merge Africa and Europe

Don't think it's a good idea at all. Waste precious coasts to get more more mundane heartland? Who ordered that? For nations that do not grow? In the world where agriculture is barely profitable?

Why would you need land, seriously, in 2016? Look at Hong Kong and Singapore, land is liability. Interesting how perspective changed in a hundred years.