paulhauggis

"Asian-Americans (including Chinese-Americans) have to have better grades and test scores to have the same chance as your average white American "

It's because Asian-Americans statistically score much higher than white Americans so the competition is fierce.

If you check the "Asian" box when you take the SATs, you actually get points deducted from your overall score.

I'm not sure what started it, but the vicious cycle of over-achieving continues to make it so they need to get extremely high scores to be accepted to many ivy-league universities.

On top of this, most universities in the US have student quotas based on ethnicity, instead of basing admission on merit.

"There was exactly one breaking point, from Python 2 to Python 3"

One breaking point?

The majority of the libraries that I use don't even work properly in Python 3. The standard Mysql library for instance, which is used in the majority of ORMs (including SQLalchemy) isn't included in Python 3, which means you need to make major changes/try to use a different library.

The case of many standard libraries were changed, breaking lots of code. Example: ConfigParser to configparser.

Even simple things like print 'test' is now print('test')

These are only a few examples. There are lots of other major changes that break 2.X code.

I have been using Python 2.X for all of my projects and wanted so badly to change to 3.x for my new projects. However, because of all incompatibilities, I can't.

I don't think I'm alone on this either. Python 3.X still isn't being used by the majority of developers.

An interesting discussion on this very topic):

http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=39637&sid=b6a11...

Wait, what happened to freely disclosing your salary to everyone? Remember the hashtag movement??

You mean to tell me that this is actually a bad idea?

It's pretty simple: If I have a website that relies on advertising to make money and the majority of people coming to my site have ad block, they will never see my ads and I won't make money.

But it really only hurts the small business trying to eek out a living. Small businesses will go under and what's left will be large conglomerates.

Hacker news seems to be a popular place for people that no nothing about economics and do everything in their power to willingly give up markets to the likes of large companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.

The interesting part is that that then there's outrage when the above companies abuse their monopoly...when the regulations and culture that you supported created them in the first place!

We can't keep people from getting addicted to drugs either. Using your logic, there is no moral case for making them legal. You really aren't winning any arguments here.

No worries though. Developers will continue to come back to HN and bitch about losing their high paying development jobs.

I'm tired of trying to defend stupid...and just do what everyone else does and capitalize on it instead. The company that writes the most popular Ad block extension has done just this: you can pay to get yourself on a white list. Tell me again how this has anything to do with saving people from malware?

I've done my part for society.

It's amazing that there are so many smart people that can't see the forest through the trees.

No. Completely blocking legitimate ads and destroying any possible business model for the person with the content is the problem now.

The example of the doctor they gave doesn't even speak Swedish. This is most likely why he isn't getting hired. They should make it their mission to learn the language of the country and then put it on their resume.

I can bet they will get more resume call backs.

IE: thought control.

Scary. 1984 is alive and well...

Consider the fact that ad blockers and the Internet culture of ignoring ads has led us to this point.

I suppose it's a good parallel to the drug laws: you push people to the illegal market when it becomes impossible to get what you want through the ethical/legal route.

Even if the underlying components changed, they could still keep angular backward compatible. They choose not to.

It's the same with many other frameworks and languages. Most of these drastic changes have to do with the politics of the community

I still disagree that it doesn't have anything to do with money. You can't deny the fact that the majority of these communities make money on books, speaking engagements, and consulting.

Yes, yes I do. All of the examples I gave come from actual experience. You also added absolutely nothing to the discussion.

" potentially have your entire screen taken over with alerts offering to clean out the viruses found on you computer, the smart consumer is going to take option A every time."

The only time I've seen this is when I've gone to shady websites (porn, filesharing, etc). Legitimate websites don't want to piss off their user base and don't have ads like this.

"The problem is that much of the times ads are disruptive, annoying, and potentially harmful"

Do you have statistics to back this up? We seem to need scientific evidence in every other case, but with things like this, you can pull it out of thin air.

There are a small percentage of ads that are disruptive, but the majority are not. It sounds to me like Sysadmins need to start doing their job.

"The advertising industry, and those that employ it, need to aggressively move against bad practices, or the consumers will continue to do it for them."

The consumers will only get punished. Ads are on their way out. What's becoming more popular? Paywalls, ads disguised as movies/videos/actual content.

Think of things like Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz. This is the direct result of consumers creating a culture of avoiding ads.

How about if all of the major Internet providers decide to cut off anyone trying to use Bittorrent because of a small percentage of people abusing it for illegal content??

This is the equivalent of adblocker: punishing all businesses for the actions of a few. Funny how the same people that are against this behavior has no problem using it when it is in their favor.

More bullshit hypocrisy.

So..you would be satisfied with paywalls on every website you want to visit and increased restrictions when it comes to content sharing?

It's not the only way to make money on the Internet, but it is one of the only ways someone with very little money can actually make a living on the Internet.

One more example of the tech community helping large companies take over entire industries and make it nearly impossible to start a company without massive capital.

It started with open source: Businesses now can take entire open source apps, which were engineered for free, and hire software mechanics at 1/4 the cost.

Napster and file sharing only made it impossible for the average independent artist to make a living on music. I know a handful of artists that could at least make a decent living before file sharing changed the mindset of the average user. Now, nobody will buy their music because they can just get it for free. Services like Spotify are a joke with nearly 1 million plays netting the artist something like $100.

Think about it next time you see these articles that claim that the only way to have a successful business is to come from a rich family and realize that the reason this is the case is because of increased government regulations and a community culture that supports the further destruction of small businesses.

Amazon is really a terrible company that should have died a horrible death along with all of the other un-profitable companies during the late 90s.

On top of this, I don't know how they aren't getting fined by the government for anti-competitive practices. They actively use the data from marketplace sellers to compete by undercutting.

In many of the categories you are now required to give them all of your supplier information. Within a short period of time after you do this, Amazon sells the exact same product at a much lower cost. This is not a coincidence.

Policing of the marketplace is also done by bots and once you are banned, there is really no way to talk to anyone to get your situation resolved. They also keep all of your money for as much as 180 days. It's a slap in the face for large sellers that are making Amazon lots of money (16%+ of every transaction).

You also aren't allowed to have any contact information (unlike Ebay, for instance). This means you aren't building a business at all. You are merely selling products on behalf of Amazon. As a buyer, I find this frustrating because in many cases, Amazon won't help the buyer and say that the transaction is between the customer and the buyer, not Amazon itself.

The irony is that many people here that want to create a startup and earn any kind of living will have a diminishing chance over time because of the increased usage of ad blockers..many of whom support ad blocking with a passion.

It's funny how so many development communities feel like they need to start over and create an entire new framework.

Perl 6, PHP 6 (which was never released), the disaster that is Python 2/3 (many standard libraries were renamed breaking a ton of libraries, and now Angular.

PHP, which is hated by many here because it isn't hip, at least allows you to run 4 code on the 5 interpreter with no issues.

When Microsoft did this with VB back in the 90s, which caused DLL hell, the community raged. Now it's a normal part of development.

I feel like it's only about the money. Many open source communities make money on support only and can charge companies lots of money to make the shift. It also means tutorials, books, speaking engagements, etc.

It takes very little money to start an internet company these days. If you dont have the capital, work and save it. Stop making excuses.

Its because you want cheap labor. It has nothing to do with departments being out of date or anything in this article.

Money doesn't change science. This has been told to me (by many people here on HN) time and time again when I mention the same exact points listed here, but for climate change studies.

So..nothing to see here, it's 'settled science'.

Nice people give up more equity than they should and trust the people with the money.

If you really want personal success, you need to show strength, not be 'nice'. Otherwise, the only person you will be making successful are the venture capitalists.

I've seen this time and time again: many venture capitalists feel that new founders haven't paid their 'dues' and don't deserve to have a share larger than essentially an employee.

There should be statistics on YC companies: What percentage of founders actually end up making a significant amount of any buyout.

I'm guessing it's a very small percentage...

So why should the privacy of cheaters be any more important than the privacy of people like...Donald Sterling????

Sorry, but when the ends justify the means because you don't like someone's behavior/beliefs/actions, I have no sympathy when the same thing happens to you.

This should open up a discussion about protecting all privacy, but somehow I doubt it.

"At some point you're going to have to accept that the vast majority of scientists accept that climate change is real and that the vast majority of people who deny the reality of climate change are not scientists and have misunderstood the science."

Like I said, I never said Climate change isn't 'real'. The dispute is how much the climate is changing and what is causing it.

The vast majority of climate scientists:

1) It would be career-suicide to express any other opinion about climate change besides the current narrative. Many have already been fired for doing so. I was in Academia for many years and pretty much everything has to do with politics.

2) Rely on the same sets of data. Confirmation bias is a real thing. If you even bothered to look at the website I mentioned, you would see that some of the main studies used for climate change proof are not peer-reviewed.

If 'science' means research without peer-review, completely invalid studies, the refusal to admit studies that are wrong, silencing opposition, and using politics to bully the opposition, I will agree.

However, this isn't science and if it was just science as you say, we wouldn't have politics, lying, and outright fraud involved in so many instances.

Al Gore, for instance, is now a wealthy man for essentially getting laws passed to force companies to buy carbon credits from his own companies. He pushed 'Global Warming' as 'Settled science' and the science community accepted it.

The pope came out a few months back and backed climate change. Everyone pointed to this as some sort of proof. They ignored the fact that the pope also talked about how trans-gender people are not seen as human in the eyes of god.

If you can't see the problem here, you don't really understand science yourself.

"What happened to the ways of the hackers of yonder? Why are we interested less in systems and more in getting that promotion and that joy. What happened to that internet where you could express your thought in code and break and mix systems in new ways."

Life happens. You realize that hacking on a fun project doesn't pay the bills and if you want to have a nice lifestyle, you will need to get some sort of job. A job means you will be working on something at some point that is boring/you don't really want to do it.

This is why I left that life and started my own company. I hack on new projects constantly and still have the same amount of fun I always did when I was much younger.

Let's be a little more honest here. You say this, but like everybody else that makes this statement, it only applies to things that align with your narrow view of the world.

It's a common tactic to root out and silence opposing view points used in dictatorships and non-free nations. As long as someone isn't making death threats or something similar, speech should be free.

But I think people like you need to have their livelihood and speech taken away for good for something they said on the Internet to fully understand why speech needs to be free and protected for all, not just the chosen few.

If I donated some money to a pro-gay marriage proposal, I shouldn't get fired from my job (or bullied online)..so why did the ex-mozilla CEO get bullied and then fired for donating to what he believed in? Because it's against the narrative? This isn't how freedom is supposed to work...

How about gangsta rap groups of the late 80s? Local law-enforcement and many other people used the exact same words that you use today: The freedom of speech has limits. Should they have been prevented from going on stage?

How about occupy Wall street? Why should specific types of speech be allowed in the name of freedom and others deemed conflicting with 'human rights'????

I suspect you and many other people posting here will attempt to come up with reasons why the examples I listed should be accepted but other forms of free speech (which happen to be against your personal views) are wrong and need to be silenced.

This bullshit only creates a divide between us and if our society weren't so lazy, it would lead to another war.

"She remembered a nice, white man. He had called her one day on the telephone months after she’d squeaked through high school with a “one-point something” grade-point average."

#Nottheonion

If the users here on HN can't see that this article is heavily biased and racist, there's something wrong.

It's this sort of thing that leads me to believe that 'smart' people aren't all that smart and can easily be manipulated by the media and people that power-hungry politicians.

cough Global Warming cough

This article is trash and shouldn't even be here on HN.

I'm actually happy this happened.

When the private conversation of Donald Sterling was leaked..it didn't matter..because morally, he did something wrong and needed to have everything taken away from him.

When it was leaked that the Mozilla CEO donated a small amount of money to a cause that angered the left, it didn't matter how we got the information. He was bullied online (and offline) until he resigned.

When Wikileaks leaked the locations of covert soldiers in foreign countries, we had many people here on HN saying it doesn't matter if they even get killed..they shouldn't have been there in the first place. I was down voted and silenced for saying anything contrary to this or even having an opinion on it that didn't fit the narrative.

But somehow, because it probably effects people here on HN (and cheating isn't really a problem), it draws the line.

So, to me, this is justice. If you cheat and don't use a fake name...and your spouse/boss/newspapers/family find out that you are on this list. It's your own fault and you deserve what you get.

Let this be a lesson to you all: You should protect the rights of everyone, even if you don't agree with what they are saying. Otherwise, people like me won't protect your rights when the same thing happens to you.

If want the bullying to stop for being gay...it's a little absurd that a person with a different set of religious beliefs than your own deserves to get bullied in the same way (and it's justified).

In fact, I might just make a website that utilizes all of the data and cross-references Facebook, family, friends, etc...or a bot that automatically contacts them. To make it easier to find out if your spouse is cheating. It's similar to how the GNU uses the existing system to promote freedom.

This should bring about a discussion about privacy and why bullying someone online and destroying personal lives (or firing someone) for a person's lifestyle or opinions is not good for society and is wrong.

This guy picks apart many of the global warming 'studies' as non-scientific and has some really good counter-examples, which is actual science:

http://www.climate-skeptic.com/

There was a study about butterflies migration and everyone just took it as fact that it was due to climate change. When another study came out proving that it was wrong (with more science), the original study was never withdrawn and is still used to this day as an example of climate change.

It's not even a debate that CO2 is causing warming. It's that CO2 isn't causing it at anything near a catastrophic rate.

It's used by the likes of Al Gore to make billions from things like carbon credits and the politicians to attack their political opponents. It's not the first time the scientific community was used as pawns in someone else's game.

So much of the data is either: changed, doctored, or even hidden (climate gate brought out many issues with some of the leading climate scientists and showed that much of the data isn't actually being peer reviewed. I thought this would bring about a discussion about real science...but it was covered up and scoffed at by the scientific community because it made them look bad.

We are spending so much money on global climate change, while ignoring many other pollutants that might actually save some of the environmental disasters that we have created(which cost much less to fix).

You don't have to be a climate scientist to see bullshit science. I was part of the academic world for many years and it's unbelievable how much politics plays into the research that is published. It's why I left it forever.

This post will probably be modded down. Mostly because when something against the narrative is posted here on HN, it's not even discussed. The person who posted it is bullied into submission or silenced because you not only can't see something you disagree with, you can't bear to have someone else see it either.

I see it as the tactics of the intellectually inferior. Those insecure people that can't have ideas discussed freely and without prejudice because it goes against their core beliefs.

Even the name 'climate skeptic' is a pejorative used to make the other person look like they are an idiot that knows nothing about the climate or science. This has no place in science. Science should not be about personal and ad hominem attacks.

That's the funny thing: I'm demanding more science and the climate change zealots are basically saying that the science is 'settled'. The science is never 'settled'. When it is, it's called religion.

I'm sick and tired of politics ruling over science and you should be too.

Its funny how most political discussions online lead to this (abuse of power,silencing)

"I'm sorry but that's a parasitic perspective. What's the meaning of life? To work 80 hours a week to ensure someone gets their Elsa doll delivered in half an hour?"

The meaning of life is whatever you make of it. If you want nice things, you will need to work your ass off to get it.