jisaacstone

Every group I know of that actually advocates for density does have this as their goal. It is a bit odd that the external reputation is that they do not, to the point that parallel orgs sometimes appear advocating for pretty much the same things but "with more emphasis on livability" or similar.

The book "Mothers and Others" discusses this at length, positing not only did mothers have much more "Alloparental" support in the past, but this was the key fact that allowed the evolution of our big brains. That is, alloparental involvement was a necessary precursor to homo sapian big-brain evolution and the key thing that was lacking in other apes.

Very interesting and highly reccomended

I've had some good bus experiences, in Mexico City and KunMing I've ridden in nice clean busses with dedicated lanes and raised platforms for easy entry/exit[1]. It's near as nice as rail and from what I understand quite a bit cheaper to build

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Estaci%C3%B3n_SetDomingue...

Also seems to be the case in ffx ...

I went to high school with this guy, and used his company as a payment processor when I was running a small retail shop. That was about 4 years ago. really did a good job nailing down the small merchant niche by removing dumb fees like 'drop fee' and 'statement fee'

It's been really weird to see everyone's reaction to this thing. Surreal almost. Didn't see Notch get this kind of hate when he shared his bonus with all employees. Perhaps it's because he works in the financial industry?

It highlight the difficulty of comparison, that this tool assumes a western diet. I'm talking about milk, cheese as part of the cost of living. Nearly all chesse is imported and milk is rare. Also boneless skinless chicken breasts?

Not sure the solve for this, just found it interesting.

OK I feel compelled to tell you that the 99% white billionare thing is incorrect. USA does have the most billionares but they are not all white and also China is currently in the #2 spot with India in #4.

Also if you are referring to the proplem of private prisons I do agree it's probably not a good thing but since less than 1/5 of prisons are privately run I don't think it is the main cause of the problem.

no I mean which of the rules is being broken?

Having trouble finding the problem with this solution: http://i.imgur.com/ToduSGR.jpg

Anyone see what the issue is? Been staring for 20 minutes . . .

I agree with the other commentors that the samples must be non-random in some way. Italy and China being in the same bucket ought to give it away.

I'm certain this is just the proficiency of people who happened to take their test and therefore is completely meaningless.

was not rural, bit lived in the centre of a small city (60k persons)

was 5 minutes walk to nearest grocery and 5 minutes bike to work. Though in the winter I would walk (half hour) because biking on ice is deadly.

interesting. Thanks!

You've never been poor.

$2-3 / day for food is doable (Cali groceries are a bit more expensive so maybe $4 here). Cut out all but the cheap meats. bread and veggies are super cheap (corn can be 5/$1 when it is in season)

no insurance. no internet (libraries are great). no car.

I never had expenses above $1000/month (not counting the month I paid $1000 to buy my first car) until I moved to the bay area and started making six figures.

maybe not in a city, but I've lived in a rural area on less than $1000/month and I still know people who pay less than $300/month for rent.

after rent, having no car (bicycle) and no data plan cut things down even more.

only real issue is lack of medical insurance.

I don't understand the questions. Who is asking these questions? Am I legally obligated to answer? Is that really how jury selection works? Seems a bit ridiculous that they are allowed to ask such specific (and often irrelevant to the case at hand) questions.

My experience (back when Hired was known as DeveloperAuction) is that most of the 'offers' I received were completely impersonal and disingenuous.

What I mean is that it seems the companies 'bid' on anyone who met some minimum requirement and relied on the initial phone screen to actually vet the candidate. The three phone screens I had the person on the other end displayed no knowledge of the experience and skills I listed on my profile and one did not even have any preference what division of the company I should work for (was just looking for another somewhat competent software engineer, not caring much beyond that)

My point is: personalized messages are more likely to result in a hire BECAUSE the person writing the message knows what they are looking for. Conversely the recruiters I deal with on a regular basis are only looking for a 'python engineer' or something similar. They could not possibly write a personalized recruiting message.

"The neighbors in the community, I think, wanted to be reasonable, but they didn't feel safe having their kids go to the center"

Making laws to make the neighbors feel safer! Fantastic! "Don't be poor around me, I don't feel safe."

This is one of the worst forms of NIMBYism. And treating the disadvantaged as dangerous is a form of prejudice. How unfortunate that people only seem to care about racial prejudice.

hey, try wechat.com (for the product mentioned by parent)

tencent is the corporate conglomerate and owns QQ, weibo, wechat and others.

QQ has been around for a bit and would be analogous to yahoo (social network, chat, news, email). QQ.com reflects this.

wechat is the new product they are trying to push to the global market.

I have a 30in monitor and I put all fonts at 16+ pt so they are easily readable from a distance, then I relax instead of leaning in toward the screen. I am often mentally tired at the end of day but no eye strain.

When I work remote using my laptop I always end with a headache and often tired eyes as well.

Many many hackers at my office use 3 column tmux or screen terminal sessions all day long on 11 in laptop screens, but monitors are cheap so why strain your eyes?

As others have mentioned check on ambient lighting and brightness settings. You may also want to try setting your white balance, contrast and saturation levels. Factory defaults are for making them look good in on display in a store, not for daily use.

Yes one problem with minimum wage is that it is fixed across the country even though cost of living disparities are huge. The high cost of living in silicon valley pushes up wages even at the lower end, whereas in some rural areas it might even seem a bit high

For example in my hometown it is still possible to rent a flat with a friend for less than $400/month meaning single people can survive on very little

I think you are mostly correct. More precisely, if you take away race you will see that the distinction is 90% education-based. Specifically talking about immigrants, those indians and chinese (and japanese, pakistani, nepalese, korean, iranian, etc) as well as the eastern eropeans that you do not see all have a good education an most likely come from at least the top half of their society.

The Hispanic immigrants are more likely from a lower class an much more likely to have arrived on something like a family visa with no higher education at all.

Too many hippies on this thread.

The biggest problem with the us economy currently is the erosion of middle class jobs for unskilled and semi-skilled labor. My grandparents lived comfortably on union jobs. Most of those jobs are gone now, and those that exist are paying less all the time. I know a man who is 60 working in a lumber mill making less then he ever has in his life (40+ years of factory work).

Yes sure consumption has increased with affluence but Many people don't realize how hard it is for an unskilled and unconnected person to find any kind of work. I know some Iraqi refugees who could not even get agriculture work because the Hispanic population always filled any open jobs through network effects.

The only jobs that exist for unskilled labor are service sector, fast food &tc. These may pay enough to survive in many places but it will not be comfortable or secure.

Second biggest problem is the rising cost of healthcare. 15% of GDP and growing, more than half of that is government paid (medicare / medicaid / etc). My father is self-employed so purchases his own healthcare, but there is no out-of-pocket maximum for him so when my mother was diagnosed with cancer there was a massive financial cost despite 80% being paid by the insurance company.

There are other problems as well, but those are the biggest cause of financial insecurity and lower lifestyle quality among the bottom quintile of US citizens.

Edit:

Fewer hippies after I had composed my rant. Re: rents. yeah they are bad but really only outrageous on the coasts. So depending on your location the rent can kill you, but in my hometown it was never a big deal.

> the uglyness makes sites hard to navigate and hard to use

No, ease-of-use and beauty are different things, though often conflated in rants.

I've never used any of those sites so I cannot speak to that aspect, but as far as beauty is concerned in a lot of the examples the ruby site looks more trendy, possibly because they are newer, because python has been around for a bit longer?

Site-wide redesigns are rare for content-focused technical sites, especially volunteer-based open-source projects.

Your comment on brand is probably close to the truth

thinking this way: in the mind of the consumer tasty-ohs are not cheerios, though they are a replacement, but a seat on Southwest is the same thing as a seat on Delta. some people care, most don't. Airlines have not been able to successfully differentiate their products, so they operate in a commodity market, same as petrol or supermarkets.

I did a write up o how I snuck into tech a while back:

http://jisaacstone.blogspot.com/2012/12/how-to-get-job-in-2-...

Some points of differentiation:

I did not finish any projects in any sort of demoable state

I did not build a network

I didn't really have a plan

The most important bit is this:

> Learn relentlessly and without excuses

There are enough people hiring that you really only need to demonstrate basic competency and apply for every jr or entry level position you find. Eventually you'll find a place where someone is actually looking for ability.

Tech is as close to merit-based hiring as you'll find outside of actual trades.

The important distinction between a software project an a government is the ease of transition.

Democracy is good because (if well designed) it protects the rights of the minority as well as the majority. But a dictatorship can use resources much more efficiently to accomplish it's goals.

Since programmers can easily switch frameworks it is better to have each guided by a strong and idealistic central leader.

I'm thinking about PHP vs Python

As an experienced Python dev who recently started programming primarily in java: You should build something big in a scripting language - probably ruby or python - the different style really will make you a better developer.

I think learning java made me better ad designing classes (I never explicitly used a singleton in python before) and helped a bit in my thinking about concurrency.

For python or ruby try to follow the common idioms rather than programming in a familiar style. I'd recommend avoiding classes altogether at first, trying to get as much done with the built-in data structures and functional aspects of the languages.

For me the thing I miss most in java is the interactive interpreter. I usually develop with an ipython instance open so I can test out different ideas and explore the features of a new package quickly. I believe that is why scripting languages are favored by hackers and startups.

That's a bit off though, stating the change was a couple can have two children if both parents are an only child. That change was actually made a while ago, the new law is if either parent is an only child the couple can have two.

guardian link: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/15/china-one-child...

I used to think I was 'bad at spelling', I realize now it is the same.

I was 'good at math' but 'bad at spelling' and that was normal and natural. Except I found out it is just as much a lie as the opposite thought the author had.

There is this:

http://www.weirdasianews.com/2009/11/21/hong-kong-citizens-l...

Which is not a good way to live, but much much better than riding a bus.

Zoning and fire codes and whatnot means this may be illegal here. But really I think people here are more comfortable with homelessness than allowing uncomfortably affordable housing to be built.