82 karma · joined August 10, 2016
plato.stanford.edu, which is a philosophy encyclopedia by Stanford university.
I think Iraq, Egypt, Iran and India were all as hot as they are now and they all had some of the greatest civilizations. Historically these "countries" spread beyond current political borders which more or less encompasses a continuous stretch of land and I am talking in that sense.
Brilliant appropriation.
I am in a similar boat as you, except I am trying to move from C++ desktop to web domain, and this is what I am doing - building apps (actually porting my private desktop apps to web platform). Once I am happy with the quality, I will leverage on them. Of course, I am looking for a position comparable to my current one (lead dev or more) so I am being a bit more thorough etc.
> I was starting to once again decide if I wanted to found something or look for a job, then I realized I actually wanted to be a developer. So it is a mature decision.
You mean you want to work as an employee for someone as a developer and not be a developer entrepreneur? Just want to know.
Have you considered what is trivial and lighthearted to you might be deeply offensive to her? You might say "that is exactly what I am trying to change" but to that I would say "why". Unless a person is explicitly causing harm either by doing anti social things or inciting people with speeches to do anti social things, or forces their belief system on you, what someone believes in or finds funny is no one's business. I guess your mother isn't any of that - she's just a law abiding woman with a certain religious faith that makes her life feel meaningful - so leave her alone.
It also seems that you are to quick to relate religious people with religious extremists, which is flawed. The whole idea of atheists having to "wake up" religious people is quite cocky and indecent. Also the assumption that religious people have "impaired judgement" is deeply offensive. If anything, its the atheists who are extremists with impaired judgement because they think they are better then the religious people.
I used to be one of these cocky atheists in my early 20s and used to constantly bother my deeply religious mother until one day she told me off. She basically said why do I bother her when she doesn't force me to follow the religion (she did like any parent till I was a teen and rebelled and then left me alone). That was a wake up call to me. Of course, my cockiness will come right out whenever a religious relative or colleague tries to mock my lack of faith or give me unsolicited advice with religion based arguments. But in general, I don't try to be holier than thou and look down upon religious people or interfere with their faith.
However, as a strict outsider looking at things, I find it amusing that every startup claims to disrupt something or the other, many times things that have already been claimed to be disrupted by others, and there is hardly anything to separate one from its competitors in terms of technology. I find it no different than every bigco claiming they are leader in something or the other (which could be arguably true in some cases) but often simply recreating the same technology the competitors have for any number of reasons. In both cases there is tremendous amount of cliche in the way they talk or present their ideas while overselling themselves, which sometimes amuses and sometimes annoys.
I hope by 'you' you mean 'one'.
If the reason is latter, I wouldn't worry too much. But in order to make my weekends or off days productive, I try to sneak in a small share of web browsing on working days - it basically works like rest/sleep. As for former, I let the interest or necessity generate naturally and not force myself to do something useful and think its a crime to relax.
Further, programmers actively look to change jobs whereas typical people needing union look to holding on to their jobs till retirement as much as possible. A programmer could also go freelance and charge whatever he likes. Exploiting loopholes in the current job contract, programmers could even do consultation or host a revenue earning webapp as a side business. A union like setup seems to be a hindrance to such activities more than being useful.
Finally, most programmers are highly opinionated and always seem to disagree on everything, not just programming things. It would be a miracle for a thing like a programmer union to even exist. :P
> One style is the complement of the other, so I don't think you make a good point.
I am not a psychology student or a professional and I am unaware if studies have been done on the topic. Also, I am speaking in general, not just with respect to the US elections.
I disagree. Demonizing and providing the option to select the lesser evil is much more effective psychologically than saintifying and providing the option to choose the better saint. It is reasonable to expect people to be extra cautions in choosing the lesser evil as it troubles their morality if they wrongly choose the bigger evil. In the latter case however, people could afford to be more complacent, and could even fail to perceive any difference at all. And we can all see that demonizing is never done equally, some parties get targeted more than others, for whatever reasons, So it seems one could steer the result by choosing to demonize. I don't think or know that this is intentionally used as a strategy (by whom?) but if it were its clever.
It seems the motivating factor, ostensibly, is to protect children. However, the primary concern of those who don't like this seems to be with leaks and possible ensuing shaming. So, if the stigma attached to watching (non illegal) porn is done away with, the fear of leak becomes irrelevant. If protecting children is paramount then society must do away with silly witch hunts and being so anal (no pun intended).
While we are at it, why restrict to porn and why not extend to all things abusive to kids, including violence, racism, stupid stunts and pranks etc referenced by many other posters? Seems porn gets targeted almost always! imagine if porn were a person in the west, they would have sued the heck out of everyone.
I was implying something like why reading something from a textbook is better than a random answer on reddit or yahoo answers. Mind you, I am talking about posters talking about specific things, not giving opinions on a variety of things, which is why I mentioned "topics in which they are known for".
> Why is reassurance a good thing?
I prefaced my post with "personally" specifically to avoid this line of discussion. It is a personal perception, and as I said elsewhere it is futile to argue about perceptions. The answer is, it just is.
> That seems like it'd imply that you're relaxing your guard when considering their opinion.
That's reaching.
I haven't done anything like that first hand, and this response might not be useful, but FWIW I have browsed many profile on LinkedIn (mostly stackexchange users and HN folks who make it public, and the related ones) and I was quite surprised to see many have done something similar - taken a demotion to join startups. I was further surprised that their next job was at a more established megacorp at a level comparable to the original one. By this observation it seems not to be a problem. However, I don't quite know if they had it easy or had to negotiate a bit, both for the position and the salary.
I can't believe you were so eager to respond to me that you didn't continue reading my post. I answer your query like in the very next sentence.
> If it's important to the conversation, the commenter can point out their own past experience (which Animats did by saying "As one of the early workers on network congestion").
This is basically what I was trying to convey. By making it known via some mechanism, HN would help posters from repeatedly posting their credentials before saying something deep and insightful or unpopular. A mechanism that isn't obvious, as in a button that makes something else visible that shows something about a distinguished poster, would benefit both parties I think.
Personally, having a "blue tick" like thing for distinguished posters is helpful psychologically as it reassures me that I am not reading comments by newly minted young adult or a 20+ years experienced person doing mostly rote work. Now, there is nothing inherently bad about comments made by such posters, just that it would be far more reassuring to know that a poster is, hopefully, bringing in his publicly acknowledged experience into what he is saying, especially on topics in which that person is known for. To make it clear, they could even be a 20 something distinguished person! The point is not about age but about accomplishment.