philipps

Agree with almost everything you wrote. But given the track record of big philanthropy I doubt very much that this will be more efficient than government efforts.

I can’t say enough good things about public libraries. At the MIT Media Lab we started an innovation exchange with US libraries to co-develop new STEAM education programs together (tinkering with electronics, building a “food computer”, using data to tell stories...). We found that libraries are wonderful collaborators. They are also one of the last places where people from all walks of life encounter each other in a friendly environment. More info about the project is at https://PLIX.media.mit.edu (and I hope this post doesn’t seem too self-promotional - I just want to share our excitement about working with public libraries).

This highlights how far the US is lagging behind in terms of Internet access and cost. Paying 60$/month or more for mediocre speeds is common even in major urban areas, due to the lack of competition. I live in the heart of Boston and only have one ISP I can buy service from. And there is no mobile alternative that offers (truly) unlimited, fast, and affordable data.

Which is why a more exaggerated comparison would be this: a person who walks home after finishing work to cook dinner with the family using vegetables grown in the backyard vs a person who eats out in a bar, drives home drunk, gets into an accident, ends up in hospital, and creates a huge increase in GDP.

The example downplays the positive impact of the increase in GDP (eg the drunk driver creates jobs for car manufacturers, police officers, and doctors) but it shows how our narrow focus on GDP rewards behavior that may not be desirable.

I remember google having vastly more useful results than its competitors at that time. The uncluttered design was a bonus.

This is not correct (or at least strongly disputed) as Cambridge University economist Ha Joon Chang explains in his book “Kicking Away the Ladder”. In essence, there is historical evidence that development through protectionism (and appropriation) has worked out well for the UK and the US.

Two points: It is not useful to generalize “African states” because different African countries have different systems and qualities of governance. The current US system of governance has some characteristics that citizens of other countries would find unacceptable, eg the disconnect between popular and electoral college vote, the large amount of power of the presidency, the politicization of the judiciary. South Africa’s constitution and constitutional court on the other hand are widely considered an example of good governance.

Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang’s book “Kicking Away the Ladder” describes how loose IP regulation has been at the center of the economic development of many countries. Sadly, once countries have developed to a certain level they tend to implement stronger IP to protect their position against other countries.

http://www.paecon.net/PAEtexts/Chang1.htm

German speaking countries went through an effort to reduce the most obvious spelling exceptions in 1996. It introduced new spelling for many existing words but also allowed the use of the previous spelling to continue (in effect creating the situation OP describes where different options are equally valid). I lived in Germany at the time and remember a lot of resistance and confusion after the changes went through. Also, some of the leading newspapers defined their own in-house rules (based on valid interpretation of the official rules).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_orthography_reform_of...

Could it be because “a norange” and “an orange” sound very similar?

I would absolutely recommend visiting. Barcelona is one of the most incredible cities in the world. Do a little research on the different areas. Don’t carry around 10k of valuables! And don’t leave your stuff lying around on the beach. Have an amazing time!

I agree that the police and justice system in the US feels slow, ineffective, and biased, but I think that trying to fix it so that everyone can depend on it is the opposite of helplessness.

I’m not a very active contributor here, but the only points I occasionally find myself paying attention to are the ones on HN. It actually means something to get a few replies.

Great news. Happy to become a paying Flickr customer again. There still isn’t a good place to store and share photos where it doesn’t feel like someone else owns them. Good integration with mobile and reasonably priced storage would be at the top of my list. And I agree with the overall tenor that then community is what made Flickr amazing. Happy to contribute to the efforts of bringing that back. Lots of challenges ahead, but this feels like a good thing for the internet.

I grew up in Germany and 100 years does not sound like a long time for a house to last. Maybe that’s they main difference: expectation of longevity. Which is surprising because while my hometown Cologne is in fact more than 2000 years old, many of its buildings were destroyed in various wars. I’m not sure where the cultural expectation that houses should last forever originates.

In light of recent revelations about the way social media companies treat their users’ data and privacy, strong regulation is not “overreach” but “overdue”.

I don’t think ownership structure is the key factor. More important is robustness of institutions that protect freedom of expression and freedom of the press. The Nazi government had little patience for critical private media either.

It would be helpful if you would cite the studies that allegedly support your statements about the poor results of learning-by-doing. As previous poster points out “committing things to long-term memory” is memorization, a small part of learning.

This is exciting and worrying in equal parts - can’t wait for the Black Mirror episode.

I agree that tying one’s convictions to identity and arguing on the basis of identity makes cooperation among individuals with different identities harder. However, I find the suggestion to reduce one’s identity problematic. First, identity plays an important role in developing a sense of community and aides in-group cooperation. And second, it’s worth keeping in mind that it’s easy to underestimate the attachment to identity when one’s own identity happens to be widely-accepted and/or relatively easy to discard.

I agree that it’s encouraging to see engineers and scientists focus their efforts on important societal issues. However, we need to find more thoughtful ways to use this technology. A good place to start is trying to deeply understand a context and need, before coming up with a solution. We just ran a workshop in Jordan with engineers who want to develop education technology for refugee learners. On the first day we took our teams to NGOs who are working with refugees and interviewed the learners. As a result most team scrapped their initial ideas. I wish learning to analyse a challenge through the lense of the user was a more integral part of engineering education.

Another argument for globally similar rates could be that cost of living is also to some degree a reflection of additional value (high quality education and healthcare, safety, etc...) which individuals in low income locations may lack. Getting paid the higher rate is a form of compensation.

However, I haven’t seen the same argument for other salaries. What makes a developer different from a musician, a lawyer, an architect? Or, for that matter, from a teacher, a waiter, and a bus driver? Shouldn’t the same argument that the work is the same apply?

> the only thing markets have been shown not to do well is make sacrifices for moral reasons.

Even reading this claim in the narrow context of the article it seems too broad. John Cassidy has written an insightful book “How markets fail“ that explains when markets do not generate optimal or desirable outcomes.

The NewYorker article mentioned above explains some of the reasons, ranging from misleading marketing to more nefarious tactics. The article is worth reading.

I am a fan of open salary models inside the organisation, but don’t see the value in sharing it publicly. It’s something we implemented at the non-profit I co-founded and it has increased the sense of ownership and buy-in from everyone on the team. One reason for not sharing the actual amounts is that non profits generally pay less than for profit companies and I don’t want our team to be pegged to their non profit salary when they decide to move on.

I don’t remember where I first heard this, but increasingly “if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the training data.”. (Doesn’t invalidate your point, which I agree with)

Where did you end up moving to? Back to Canada? The issues you describe do seem to be increasing everywhere.

German here, living in the US. For the first time in 20 years I am seriously considering to move back. There are lots of things I do not like about Germany, but there is a sense of buying into a social contract that I am coming to appreciate more and more. I do not believe that the most knotty problems can be solved by increasing individual freedoms or simply making markets more efficient. They require some form of collective action and solidarity, which seems hard to imagine happening in the current political climate in the US.

[Edit] There is something quite surreal to see a discussion about Germany’s positive image for people my age and above. I couldn’t have imagined this even ten years ago.

What are some podcasts from Germany (in German or English) that you would recommend?

I strongly agree with this. “Culture fit” is one of those concepts that often disadvantages “others”. This is something we may not be able to avoid without putting in place safeguards (concert musicians were predominantly male until blind auditions were used - and it turned out that female musicians play just as well or better).

As I mention above this is often not a result of bad intentions, but of implicit biases that have an effect on our judgements even if we are fully aware of them and explicitly try to avoid them.

See https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/aboutus.html