nathanasmith

Not me. Every time I think "Cortana", I can't help but think video game (Halo) since that's the point of reference making it seem less serious and by extension less helpful. Whether that's rational or not is neither here nor there as part of what makes this stuff a success is perception. My perception of Alexa and Google Assistant is that's it's more serious, i.e., a legitimate tool.

>and more people included in your sample, more chance of finding amazing A++ engineers that can help the industry, your dev platform, etc...

Well, whatever. Myself, I was just about to look into Electron having heard so much about it lately. But if this is how they run things, I think I'll just look elsewhere to satisfy my cross-platform development curiosities.

>Why does buying a car in America involve so much (or even any!) negotiation at all?

It's just another choice. There are plenty of car dealers here that offer a "no-haggle" experience if that's what you want.

I took a hobby related class at the local community college last year and one of the first things the professor had us do was take a quiz to determine our "learning style". For the rest of the semester, she deferred to each person's results when giving personal attention. I had long been aware that learning styles aren't backed up by any real evidence and can even be detrimental, but I figured I'd rather just deal with it than look like the old fogey in the class who thinks he knows everything trying to make the teacher look bad.

At any rate, this kind of junk is alive and well at least where I live.

Exactly my point. I'm speaking from experience and you're going on about what you'd "bet". If you're so sure you have it all figured out, why don't you go do your survey and stop talking about it.

You're making a lot of assumptions here. Myself and quite a few of my classmates in AP English ate free lunch.

The Github results were based on the assumed gender of submitters based on things like having female anime character avatars and "female sounding" usernames. I would posit that methodology as highly flawed.

>I think this hits it. Many (most?) people just aren't used to having people disagree with them. Let alone voice those disagreements and be expected to defend their beliefs and explain why they think they're right.

And some people like myself just don't feel like sitting around arguing all day.

I had a Surface Pro 4 for a while and it is really great for the first few weeks but when the honeymoon period is over, the warts start to show. Slowly but surely I gravitated back to my iPad and laptop. The day the SP4 went back to Costco was when I realized it had been collecting dust for over a week.

I see some mean spirited stuff on here from time to time but this really takes the cake.

>>"Lineage" can have a connotation of people talking about the great things their ancestors have done and attempting to somewhat attach themselves to those deeds, as well as an opportunity to look down on people of "lesser breeding".

Yeah, I guess I would have failed that Rorschach test.

I don't think I can take these impromptu rants for the next eight years.

You've inspired me to write a Greasemonkey script to filter out any comment with the word "Trump" in it. Thanks.

There is a comment on this article by me with a link to a video addressing "white privilege". I'm in class right now so I cannot go at length on its contents. If you want further enlightenment, watch the video.

> I thought Trump was supported by economic and not name calling or racial issues.

What I actually said (emphasis mine):

>> part of what sent people to the polls for Trump

The conversation from some quarters has been to group people into neat little boxes that they don't actually fit in. People voted Trump for many reasons. It is a fallacy to hypostatize them all into a singular perspective. When you see the world is more than this, you may begin to understand how Trump happened.

> Who said they don't apply to everyone?

>> How can you be racist against the ruling, privileged class?

The first quote is what I am replying to, the second is your comment to someone else from up thread. The fact that you are so conflicted regarding your own views suggests you need to think about them more carefully.

Your argument is completely fallacious. The contest from the beginning was to get the most electoral votes. The candidates campaigned with that in mind. In many one-sided states like California and Utah, voters voted with that in mind, i.e., Republicans stay home in CA and Democrats stay home in UT. If the election had been about the popular vote, the candidates would have used radically different strategies and the voters in heavy red and blue states would have voted. None of this is controversial.

> Race matters to a lot of people and should be recognized as having an axiom of privilege not unlike class (which you broght[sic] up), gender identity, and sexuality.

The narrative of "white privilege" leaves out the fact that no two people's experiences are ever alike. Social privilege is a combination of many things: socioeconomic status of their parents, educational attainment, criminal history, cultural experiences, etc. To try to encapsulate it into a trite meme like "white privilege" is a fallacy and that is part of what sent people to the polls for Trump.

First example from your article:

"I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented."

Someone being the same color as me doesn't mean they "represent" me in any way. The main criticism of the mass media over the last year and a half was how they breathlessly promoted Clinton. Yet white people turned up in droves to not vote for her. Many of those same white people voted for Obama twice. Yet he isn't white. The white privilege narrative from the perspective of your article is simple-minded and reductionist in the extreme.

Please watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrxZRuL65wQ

> it probably has more free speech than america

I am genuinely curious about this statement. Can you name something that you can say in Germany that I cannot say in the United States? I'm pretty sure I can come up with some examples going the other way.

> I spoke as a White Male, not as a representative of all White Males

>> And speaking as a White Male, the idea that the deck is stacked against us

You literally wrote the word "us" so, yes, you did speak for all white males or at least a significant enough fraction of them to make the distinguishment irrelevant.

> Your position appears to be that nobody should speak for, or even attempt to understand, anyone who does not share their own particular experience. That is obviously fallacious and suggests trolling.

You have no rational basis to define my life experience through your little lens using as specious a basis as group identity. Your argument is the fallacious one. You do not know the tiniest insignificant fraction of the people you are presuming to judge yet you pompously shoot your mouth off which is the height of hubris. If you think that is wrong or trolling then, again, you have learned nothing.

> Perhaps you could in your infinite wisdom educate us poor unenlightened seekers of wisdom as to the true state of world affairs?

You aren't seeking wisdom. You think you know everybody's experience already from the comfort of your computer. You don't. There's your enlightenment.

>I should clarify: the deck is massively stacked against a great number of people. White males are massively represented in that number. However, for many situations women and minorities face additional discrimination which you are, for some reason, unwilling or unable to acknowledge.

Again you are reducing the experience of millions of people into your little clear-cut categories and trying to speak for them. Not only are you trying to speak for white males but you apparently also speak for women and minorities. Your side's identity politicking is fallacious to its core and cost you the election. But don't stop now, we have another election in 2 years.

>And speaking as a White Male, the idea that the deck is stacked against us

So you speak for the experience of all white males now? You know what it's like to grow up in Appalachia? Did you lose a factory job in Michigan? Did you have any experience coal mining in Pennsylvania until you couldn't? Have you farmed in the middle of Kansas? If not then don't try to speak for the people who have. This kind of rhetoric from the left is a very good reason why Trump is the President-Elect right now. If your side figures that out sometime in the next four years, you might have a chance next time.

>Arpaio, Gingrich, Palin

>each is being rewarded under the Reality TV Administration of Donald Trump

None of these people as of this moment have been appointed to anything within the Trump administration, yet you say each is being rewarded. Either you know something the rest of us don't or you are peddling BS.

>>Most people will disagree because there is probably a "I don't 100% agree" reaction to it.

I was trying not to be too wordy in my post but the "disagree" is actually 2 categories split between "mostly disagree" and "strongly disagree" so that covers the "I don't 100% agree" people. Note that there's also "strongly and somewhat agree" categories.

Here's the upshot of this thread. The OP I was replying to made a reference to the "prevailing zeitgeist" in America believing people should be "saved" only if they prove their worth. I checked the most widely respected social survey and it contradicts that assertion by a wide margin. As far as the questions being biased or people 100 percent agreeing as has been mentioned, either a couple of random internet commenters are right or the most cited source in mainstream social science[0] is. Personally I'll go with the latter.

[0]http://gss.norc.org/About-The-GSS

>>How you frame the question can produce vastly different responses.

Here are some of the questions on the GSS:

In our society everyone must look out for himself. It is of little use to unite with others and fight for one's goals in politics or in unions. 67.7 percent disagreed

It is the responsibility of government to meet everyone's needs, even in case of sickness, poverty, unemployment, and old age. 57.3 percent agreed

If social welfare benefits such as disability, unemployment compensation, and early retirement pensions are as high as they are now, it only makes people not want to work anymore. 54 percent disagreed

Note that the GSS is cited more often academically than any other survey other than the US census so it carries some weight.

>>Unfortunately, the prevailing social zeitgeist in the US is that not everyone deserves to be saved- you have to earn the right to be deemed worthy enough to be saved, and really if you find yourself in a position where you need to be saved then it's probably your own fault and you should bootstrap your way out of it. The puritanical mindset is very, very strong and all-prevailing in the US.

I wasn't sure how to parse this exactly but I was curious if you are actually correct here so I had a look at the General Social Survey[0]. The closest thing I could find to your post was the question of "EVERYONE SHOULD LOOK OUT FOR SELF"[1] and it looks like 67.7 percent of Americans disagree with that statement. In light of that fact, how do you defend your contrary position?

[0]http://sda.berkeley.edu/gss [1]Put EQUAL1 as the row variable then click "Run the table"

I'll offer this tidbit.

I started taking Prozac and not long after I got on it, things started to seem a little better. I recall, one day, actually having the thought, Hey, maybe suicide isn't such a bad idea after all. Consider the fact that still having a good bit of depression yet feeling relief from anxiety actually made suicide seem like a viable option. I still get chills when I think about it.

SSRIs aren't for everyone, that's for sure.

I would imagine at least some of the additional cost comes from putting in the work to create the original product in the first place. If Xiaomi can just come along and clone an already successful air filter with a proven market, it doesn't surprise me that they could sell it for less. And we do lose when companies stop taking risks in innovating new products for fear of the copycats.

Statistics for "Computer and mathematical occupations" covers such a wide variety of occupations as to be meaningless in the context of your own claims about "junior dev" positions. But for the sake of argument..

According to your source, the unemployment rate for women in Computer and mathematical occupations in May was 2.6 vs 1.8 percent for men. That's actually a 31 percent higher amount. Still high but not 50 as you claimed in your previous post. It also says the rate for May of 2015 was exactly the same for both genders at 1.5 percent. This issue has gotten a lot of press in the last 12 months so it is very unlikely that suddenly the numbers are disparate as a result of discrimination after they were the same a year ago.

And in other sectors on your chart like in Management, professional, and related occupations, the unemployment figures are the opposite. Women unemployment went from higher to lower than the men's rate. I mean, in Architecture and engineering occupations, the unemployment rate of men is literally 100 percent higher than women at 2.2 vs 1.1 percent. It just looks like natural statistical gyrations of numbers and not conclusive or even particularly indicative of anything.

And the point is, if you are saying that huge numbers of women are graduating with these degrees and then being shut out of the job market, you can't just stop there, you have to back that up. Even ignoring the fact that just because someone has a degree doesn't mean they're qualified, quoting the percent of females in entry level dev jobs doesn't say anything about where the other women went or what they are doing. I'm pointing out that if they're out there looking for these jobs then the unemployment statistics should reflect that and via your source, they don't. Other posters have suggested graduate school and other jobs not described as entry level dev and so far that explanation seems more plausible. Ask yourself, what are CS graduates qualified to do besides be junior devs and you may be surprised with how many answers there are.

I think where your confusion lies is in order for there to be discrimination, there has to actually be discrimination. Point out the discrimination, who's doing it, which companies, what policy allows this, and we can all rally and do something about it. But just throwing out cherry picked employment numbers and claiming bias is somehow self evident which is what your argument implies isn't good enough. It actually comes across as a kind of weird p-hacking[0]. Even worse is when you introduce a credibility problem by conflating different employment sectors and inflating your numbers like you have here.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging