mannicken

RTFM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#United_States

"Laws prohibiting hate speech are unconstitutional in the United States, outside of obscenity, defamation, incitement to riot, and fighting words."

Which means if I say "women are all stupid" I should be able to avoid getting sued because of the 1st amendment.

If, however, I decline a job position because someone is female, and she or someone else will be able to _prove it in the fucking court_, then I will be guilty of violating the law in your link.

Do you or do you not see the difference between saying "man, I'd really like to punch someone right now", "I would like to punch >you< in the head", and actually punching somebody in the head?

First is just a general statement, second is a threat, third is violence.

Again, if I say "I don't want to hire women" and then go ahead and employ a woman just because I need an employee and she's qualified, I'm fine in terms of the law. It's similar to me saying "hey, I'd really wish I could rob a bank right now" and then obediently following the law and not robbing a bank.

Please do not step on my freedom of speech in the future.

I realized this shortly before I dropped out of high school. Nobody who hired me ever asked for my grades. I appreciated teacher's critique of my work if I thought his own skill was significantly superior to mine. Yet ultimately I did not give a crap about whether I had 2.5 or 4.0 GPA.

I was surrounded by perfectionist people who would retake a class because of A-, but after a while I realized they were just playing a game I wasn't interested in.

I am interested in creating impressive graphics code/designing things that don't suck/creating things of high aesthetic value. I am interested in getting paid because it allows me to have independence and concentrate on creating those things, and not feel like a parasite. That is my game, so to speak.

I did not see a very strong correlation between grades and the above so it ended up low on my list of priorities. Just like a game of chess, it made me smarter at those things I wanted to do, but I couldn't dedicate a lot of time to chess or gaming the teachers, just because I did not give a crap about those things.

I know I'm going against the zeitgeist here but I think grade, SAT scores, or degrees don't mean a lot in life.

I recently had to work with legacy code written by a guy with the highest degree possible in US. The code was hard to read, did not use clearly superior architectures, lacked documentation, and quite frankly, I could've done a lot better. There was no empathy at all to the person who will inherit the project but the "I HAVE PHD" feeling of smugness I felt strongly.

One of the worst math instructors I knew had a graduate degree which she liked to brag about more than everybody thought was appropriate to her skill.

On the other hand, I was in touch with several professors who were clearly brilliant and well-spoken... obviously education doesn't necessarily fuck up your sense of humility and introspective self-critique.

IANAL as well, but as far as I understand it's completely legal to say "I don't want to hire women". Yay freedom of speech. However, If I am hiring people (which I'm not and never done) and reject a woman based on the fact that she is a woman, and she can somehow prove it, then yes.. I risk being sued.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Oh, hey, bad news: even if you don't drink juice, never have any sugar, and spend all your time counting calories -- you're still going to die at some point. Sorry, had to ruin the whole health obsession parade here.

This is coming from a guy who counted his calories, and still logs his weight every morning, and freaks out if he's not unhealthily skinny. I just ate an apple and now I'm obese (in my mind anyway) and I weigh 79 kg. I used to feel skinny when I weighed 95kg but ran 6.5 miles. Funny, isn't it?

189 cm 79 kg, feeling very fat. Anorexia sucks :\

I interviewed at a Google campus in Kirkland. Unimpressed. Overrated madly, in my opinion. I expected a lot, a lot better campus, sorry. The buildings were boring and I couldn't find the right one because NONE OF THEM have a visible building number.

There is no map of the campus (hell, even community colleges have maps). The parking didn't have cover so after staying under hot sun, my car became extremely hot.

Unpleasant experience to say the least. People were cool, though.

I just had a much better feeling from Microsoft campus than Google's campus.

http://andyrutledge.com/images09/newsSite/images/iphone_nyt_... -- in here lower-contrast is used properly, I think. Low-contrast allowed to hide the low-priority details allowing the brain to quickly navigate through important, high-contrast titles. Not all text is important.

Put black text on black background and no calibration in the world will help you read it ;-)

Hopefully, in 100 years I'll be able to transport images from my visual cortex into electronic form and edit them through will-power. Only when that technology is perfected within a lag of no more than 200ms, will I give up on pencils.

Or perhaps, my skin will evolve into some kind of paper that I can write notes on with a tablet pen that will automatically pop-out from out of my hand due to genetic modifications with really small programmable ant-like machines (really trying to avoid using nano- here).

Self-transforming machine elves!

I definitely feel that in my life. The urge to create things, to grow, to change myself, the condescendence at anyone who is satisfied with current situation. It's like someone is itching my brain, it feels very similar to craving nicotine, or caffeine, or just mind-altering substances. It's like someone is shouting at me "common, this sucks, now go do something" even when everything is seemingly awesome.

Hilarious.

Just out of curiosity, what happened to all the horses that were left without jobs?

At first, yes. Computers were a privilege of rich and intellectual elite, at first. But as you can see, technology gets cheaper and cheaper and more accessible to the general public. Even those who do not have any money at all are able to access it through libraries and stuff.

Hallucinations here are not "really" hallucinations in a sense you rarely actually see things that are not there (for that, google deliriants). It's more like, everyone is acting out a certain role or a set of role in lives, and have been doing it for so long that they have forgotten they are just acting.

LSD and such smash the fourth wall of human theater, allowing actors to realize they are actors. Once they have realized this they have several options:

1) Continue playing the role they were playing after coming down, if they like it.

2) Change the role -- hence why a lot of people change their lives after dropping psychedelics.

3) Leave the play for a while -- this is possibly why some people commit suicide after psychedelics.

It's like, imagine you're coding.. and you're just so in flow that you forget you can do anything but code: you don't go to the bathroom, forget about food, in the zone. Now somebody snaps the chair out of you, and you realize you can do more things than just code. Now imagine you've been coding for 10-20 years straight.

Well, acid is like that guy who snaps the chair out of you.

Society considers it dangerous because it has spend so much time making you exactly what it wants, training you, brainwashing you with random shit that it doesn't want you to actually gain control of who you want to be.

You wouldn't want a dog you trained for years to bring sticks and shit on the toilet to realize all of a sudden it doesn't have to follow your commands all the time.

I suppose, and I just realized this now, that psychedelics are a way of chemically disabling social conditioning for a while. Perhaps marijuana is associated with lack of motivation not because it makes you unable to do things, but because it makes you realize some things are not worth giving a fuck about.

Weekends have kind of stopped existing for me. I do not understand the necessity of having certain time for work and certain time for leisure. I'm going off of fundamental principles of delivering basic value to whoever needs it in return for money. And who fucking gives a shit if I created that code on Monday from 9-5 or on Saturday at 3am.

>Society demands a man gets out of bed and goes to work; against his sleeping instinct, man complies.

The only case where society actually does demand a man to get out of bed is jail.

Usually, a man gets out of bed not because he is dragged out like a pet but because society offers something in return -- employment, company, money, food, purpose, etc. He can stay in his bed if he really wants to, or he can choose a more flexible schedule and wake up later, or wake up earlier.

It's a system of symbiosis; the man is making a fucking choice.

Regarding 1+1=3, there are several possibilities here:

a) The people are mathematicians, they redefined symbols and are playing around -- it would evoke curiosity in me.

b) The people are children and they're getting a rise out of you -- it would evoke amusement in me.

c) The people are deluded and insane -- it would evoke sympathy.

I don't see how these possibilities require anyone to get aggressive.

It only hurts the first time. After you get fired/quit many times, it's like taking out trash for you. Developing some confidence goes a great way.

I mean, look, the first time I had to throw out my sketches in the dumpster because I thought they sucked it was a painful experience. But after a while I grew detached to the sketch, which allowed me to concentrate on my vision more than the actual piece of paper.

Define procrastination. Perhaps I'm working on research for procrastination articles, or studying design of that web-page.

I understand what you're trying to do but a bit of advice for the future: do not offend your reader. You can offend something else they might hate, e.g. "fuck procrastination".

I just downvoted you solely on the lazy asshole comment because I took it personally, because I'm reading this. If you were to say it personally to someone, in certain cliques, you would've gotten the shit beaten out of you for saying things like that unless you aren't their teacher. I would personally just flip you off, told you to go fuck yourself, and then never spoke to you again.

Just friendly advice.

This is something I was thinking about lately. That competing for being an alpha male/reproducing is just something society has to have and encourage to exist. It's like going to high school; it's boring, it's not that much fun but it's one of those things you have to do.

There are three main ways society can encourage reproduction:

1) Fear. Mainly fear of appearing a loser if you don't reproduce/have sex. Peer-pressure in other words.

2) Positive reinforcement. Making sex more fun: sex-toys, apparel, Viagra, etc.

3) Eliminate alternatives. Eliminating/making illegal things that are better than sex/lead to decreased interest in sex -- like drugs that cause pleasure greater than orgasm.

I was asking myself lately, "Why, stereotypical nerds, being so smart and intelligent don't have much sex?" And then it hit me: because sex's pleasure is overstated through propaganda. It's a physical activity that requires immense effort and concentration, carries a ton of risk, and doesn't offer enough in return.

You know why dumbest people often have more children? Because to exert so much effort on so little in return means you have to fall into the traps of advertisement, or just do it out of culture. If you stop to think what exactly makes you want sex, you'll probably never stress over having sex again, just like you don't stress over not drinking beer if everyone's drinking it.

"It pisses me off when people don't concede that they were wrong"

In this case, we have saturn exemplifying a pure animalistic instinct of rage. You being pissed off is not an argument that helps the conversation.

Humans are not pets of society because humans are a part of society. You're trying to personalize society, in a similar way that religious freaks try to personalize the universe.

In reality, society is better understood as an emergence of many tribes working together in an economic model. Let me dumb it down:

There is a tribe of programmers. They have their own rituals, their own ceremonies, even their own drugs that they like to take (yay Mountain Dew). They are very good at controlling computers.

Then there is a tribe of people who make pizza. They are good at making pizza, really good. Well, better than most programmers anyway. They eat pizza a lot, and their life revolves around making pizza, eating pizza, talking about how different pizzas are awesome or how they suck.

Now first tribe is all like "hey, we need pizza" so they go to the second tribe and ask that tribe to make them some pizza in return for herding pizzamen's freaky computers that just get out of control all the time.

Oh, common, guys. "Evaluate your job and all the possibilities and if necessary stay until you have reached financial stability or have another offer, in which case you can contemplate quitting" just has a bit less zing than "Storm into your boss's office say 'I QUIT' then defecate on his desk and leave with Metallica - Battery playing all around you.'

And your goal is to pretend you're making a huge difference that will probably not get noticed by anyone, and even if it does, it will be for a very short period of time and after a while everyone will die and forget about it, and then the Earth will die of heat death or something, and everything you made with your "YEAAAH!" enthusiasm and pain will be destroyed anyway.

Have fun with that perspective ;-)

I have to admit I wanted to spice things a bit, playing devil's advocate on purpose. Make the discussion more interesting by challenging status quo and see if it holds up.

Good question. http://ycombinator.com/apply.html tells us that three founders (common situation) will get $20, 000, or roughly $6,667 per person. For three months. That's around $2200/month for skilled work, and it's not even a full-time job:

http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

" Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. "

That sounds like 12-14hr/day, including weekends etc.

Now you can see how the rate drops a lot when you divide $2200 by, uhm, what, 70-80hrs a week? It's barely minimum wage.

Of course, you can say 'well, but they're giving you most of the stock if you succeed'. Yeah, but that also means you'll have to pay YC back in hundreds of thousands of dollars if you succeed. (Say YC is getting 5% of your $4 mln startup).

The equity is not guaranteed. YC does not guarantee you'll get huge. They'll just pat on your shoulder and give you some pocket cash in return for a part of your company.

Which is not bad.

There's just one thing about this article that makes me feel eerie. It sounds like a piece of propaganda. PG tries evoking an emotional response out of the reader, pulling some random unsupported facts out of nowhere, like a religious preacher who'll do anything to support his point of view. What doesn't help is that since he's an investor, he is directly profiting from people working for rates below market rates and making it big. Nothing wrong with that. But still. Eerie.

" The root of the problem is that humans weren't meant to work in such large groups." WHOA! really? I mean, I don't disagree but this is a fairly huge statement. He should back it up or <every intelligent reader> will assume that he's holding them for idiots.

"I was in Africa last year and saw a lot of animals in the wild that I'd only seen in zoos before. It was remarkable how different they seemed. Particularly lions. Lions in the wild seem about ten times more alive. They're like different animals. " Oh, no! I'm not an animal! And if I am, I'm certainly the WILD TIGER FROM THE JUNGLE rather than a zoo-domesticated kitten. I SHOULD QUIT RIGHT NOW.

Again, very broad connection. Full-time employees are nothing like zoo animals. They can leave any time they want, for one.

The question is -- did PG ever work at a big company like Microsoft/Google/etc? Hard to tell from the article. Perhaps PG's intense imagination caused him to believe certain things are true while in reality they're illusions.

"It's the job equivalent of the pizza they had for lunch. " This smells. Smells bad. This would be a lot better and believable:

I worked at <a huge company> and it sucked. I spent most of my time figuring out how to impress my boss and come to the office on time, and how to log my hours properly. When I quit because it got unbearable, I realized that my logging-hours-properly skills and and getting-to-the-office-on-time skills are unmarketable, and quite frankly, a bunch of bullshit.

>Are we all really that stupid?

Yes, yes we are.

I found abstract art to be related to web-design closely, in that a web-page is essentially a piece of abstract art: shapes of various size and color that in conjunction help us navigate to text/content we want.

Clouds that cover part of the text when I'm trying to scroll down and don't go away? Seriously?

Boring article about boring business with a screwed-up design. Sorry, not even bothering to read it.

Don't put your eggs in one basket. Having one source of income that can be easily cut off is like driving a car without seat-belts or airbags. It's an illusion, yes, perpetuated by those who benefit from it.

I've worked with a company like that and it was an incredibly depressive experience (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2374271). Don't be naive, people, it's in business's best interest to keep you as close to a slave as possible, while cutting off the rest of your options by making you stay in the office for as long as possible for as little of a pay as possible.

You think your boss is your friend and likes you, and cuddles you but in reality he is an actor; it's his job to create that illusion, and he gets paid very well for playing the role properly. I do not see how this is much different from scam-artists.

That sucks. But there are some things that are real and some things that look really like reality but are actually illusions created by our emotions. Your desperation sounds like the latter one.