qubax

You completely misread my comment. Of course it's smart for time magazine to sell a worthless business to a billionaire. My point is why are tech billionaires buying money losing businesses? It certainly isn't for profit or because it is a good financial decision. So what are they getting out of it? Certainly people like bezos and benioff don't like losing money. So what is the purpose?

My issue isn't why did time magazine sell itself. That is obvious and understandable. My issue is why did a tech billionaire buy it. That isn't as obvious and understandable.

Something ridiculous about the media environment today. If time magazine can't survive, why not just put it out of business. The same thing with washingtonpost or theatlantic.

Why are tech billionaires buying up these companies? Just to push their political agenda? To support their political ambitions? To run for office? They obvious aren't doing it to make money.

I don't see how our society benefits when tech billionaires buy up media like this. If oil titans were buying up failing media just to serve as their personal mouthpiece, we'd be a lot more upset.

Also, it's terrible for the media space because it props up failing companies. If failing news companies were allowed to fail, it would open up space for newer companies with better business models or better ideas.

Sure do. And I know we have a lot more diverse culture than say sweden or spain or any european country.

Maine to NYC to new orleans to texas to california to the midwest to las vegas and throw in puerto rico, alaska and hawaii.

Feel free to show me another country that can match the diversity of peoples, cultures and land that the US has. LOL. Show me another country with the grand canyon, rocky mountains, yosemite, yellow stone park, etc.

I love people who laugh at american culture and yet watch our movies, tv shows, listen to our music, etc. So thumb your nose at us while listening to rock n roll, jazz, hip hop, techno, etc and watching game of thrones, friends, southpark, etc.

I gave an honest answer to why americans don't travel to foreign countries as much. It's because the US is the size of a continent. We have a lot of things to see here. We can literally travel thousands of miles and still be in the same country. In europe, you can drive through 3 countries in an hour.

It depends on your age, what sector the startup is in, the prospects of the startup and your relationship with the founders.

1. Is it a real startup doing real/cutting edge technology work ( aka cybersecurity, data, etc )? Will you be working on cutting edge development work?

2. Are you young with little to no responsibility ( aka no wife, kids, etc )

3. Do you believe the startup has a shot?

4. Do you respect and get along with the founders. And do they respect and get along with you.

If all the above is yes, then you may not earn as much initially, but you will most definitely learn a lot more than at google and you may be able to retire in your 20s rather than 50s if everything works out. If not, then you will be able to leverage the skill you picked up to get another job easily. Caveat being you do real development work in a real software startup.

If you are a single digit employee at a startup with a good relationship with the founders, not only will learn a lot technically and technologically, you will also learn about angel investing, VC funding, etc. You might even get to tag along to see what the hubbub is all about.

If it is a real startup, then the risks are higher but the upside is also higher. With google, you will get stability and name recognition, but you are still ultimately a corporate grunt and have to deal with burnout. Keep in mind google has extremely high turnover rates ( I believe the median tenure for a google employee is only 1 year ).

> What controls and experiments can you do in astronomy?

http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/AtHomeAstronomy/

> The scientific method is a thin veneer best left at in the high school curriculum where it belongs.

Are you seriously belittling the scientific method. It's the central idea within real science.

> Actual science is vastly more messy and interesting.

Actual science relies on the scientific method. Pseudoscience ( like economics, psychology, social "science" ) do not rely on the scientific method.

The problem with economics is that it isn't predictive and testable. That's why you cannot scientifically test capitalism vs communism. Economics is a religion where you worship a prophet ( such as Adams or Marx ) rather than produce testable and verifiable hypothesis.

You can objectively and empirically test assertions in astronomy. You can't in economics.

That's simply not true. Most americans have traveled outside of their own state. Like 90% of americans. And the 10% who haven't are mostly young children.

> Can you cite sources for your numbers?

It was a general ballpark number.

Population of british commonwealth, population of western europe + turkey, US, SK, Japan, etc would come out to be near 10X the population of the soviet union. And that's not including china, who switched sides in 60s.

If you want to see the GDP figures, you could also do it for these countries/regions.

> It was a fairly common view that the Russians + Warsaw Pact allies

I specifically said the soviet union. Not Russia ( which was the largest part of the soviet union ) and certainly not warsaw pact "allies". Would you really call warsaw pact nations "allies" considering that the soviet union had to invade and crush the czechs, hungarians, poles, etc? In any conflict with NATO, I have a sneaking suspicion that the warsaw pact nations would join NATO's side. But even if you include warsaw pact, it would still be close to 10X.

It was a common view that the soviet union wouldn't collapse also. And it was in our interest to build up the enemy as stronger than they were. It's called propaganda. The "stronger" the enemy, the bigger the military budgets.

If the soviets launched a sneak attack, they would gain an initial advantage, but they were never going to hold onto west germany. In any conventional war, the soviets would have lost. The soviets knew this and that's why they switch from a massive conventional military to a massive nuclear military ( which bankrupted them and had a hand in their collapse ).

If you were a grunt in the military, I'm sure you just simply brainwashed with whatever nonsense you were told. But if you look at the objective data ( demographics, GDP, etc ), the soviets had no chance against the US, let alone US and vast array of our allies.

> It’s prohibitively expensive and simply out of reach for many (most?) people.

No it isn't. It's just that we have a huge country stretching from the western pacific ( guam, hawaii, etc ) to the arctic (alaska ) to the caribbean ( puerto rico ). We have a variety of cultures, regions, natural wonders and peoples than any country in the world.

Most americans can afford to travel overseas. But we have so many options within the US and its more convenient. Traveling from NYC to hawaii is far more impressive than traveling from NYC to London. And we have the grand canyon, mount denali, yosemite, yellowstone, florida, mount rushmore, new orleans, texas, chicago, endless list of places to visit. Most people, not just americans ) would explore their own nation first and then see the rest of the world.

It's generally europeans who brag about traveling and yet they mostly travel between tiny european countries. What's so impressive about someone in luxembourg traveling to france, germany and belgium in an afternoon? It isn't that impressive. But they could claim to have traveled to 3 countries even though those countries are pretty much the same as luxembourg.

To put this into perspective, the distance from moscow to berlin is 1100 miles. The distance from NYC to LA is 2700 miles. We just have a lot more land, lot more culture, lot more places to visit.

According to which soviet defectors?

US and our allies outnumbered the soviet union nearly 10 to 1. The US and allied GDP had even a greater advantage in terms of wealth/GDP.

The soviet union was much poorer and weaker than the US alone. Throw in western europe and the soviets were ridiculously outmatched.

Nevermind that the soviet union had nearly lost an entire generation a few years prior (ww2), in what conceivable way would the soviet union be able to invade west germany?

There could be a replenishing or beneficial aspect of hurricanes on land. By depriving a particular region of an occasional hurricane, we might unknowingly be setting up an ecological disaster.

Just like how we worked hard to prevent wildfires and then realized that wildfires have a rejuvenating and positive effect on forests and the local environment.

Now tornadoes. That seems like the mosquito of storms. It doesn't seem to serve any purpose. Wouldn't mind if we got rid of or could direct tornadoes to save lives and resources.

> I have always subscribed to the adage that one is as old as they feel; and I don’t feel old.

You don't feel old? How about if I told you that a child born when you turned 18 is now a sophomore in college. If you had a kid when you were 18, he'd be 19 now. Or if you knew any girl in high school who had a kid, that kid would be in his 20s right now. Feel old yet?

> However, increasingly, I see I’m not as fit as I once was. This is the inevitable process of ageing,

As my grandpa said, aging is a slow decay. You are slowly rotting and you and your clothes will get that unmistakable old people smell.

> Again, I feel young, in the sense that I’m still impetuous about my career and still have aspirations of doing something I enjoy, rather than something that pays the bills.

It's like that cat stevens song says "For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not".

That is getting old.

> but the Vietnamese war in particular was a horror show.

It wasn't any more a horror show compared to any other war.

> Study the history as much as I'd like, I will never understand how "start killing people" becomes a valid solution.

You studied history and you don't understand war? That doesn't seem possible.

That's the case in all organizations - academic, government, business, military, charity, etc.

You can get your foot in the door by being competent. If you want to rise within any organization, you either have to know someone or you have to be great at office politics.

People naively think the hardest or best workers move up the ladder. No, you want the hardest and best workers working. You want them in the trenches. You want people with contacts or people you like promoted.

Whether we like it or not, success in life has a lot more to do with relationships than competence or merit. Who you know, who your family knows and who your friends knows matters far more than what you know.

In one word - syscalls. What do I win?

> - Nonstop media barrage favoring both wars.

This is the cause of your top 3 points. When the propaganda machine is going full force, it's hard be the dissenting voice. When the editorial board of the washingtonpost says that there is "irrefutable" evidence of iraqi wmd and their involvement in 9/11, it's hard for skeptics and honest people to respond without being attacked. After all, the washingpost is one of the papers of record. They certainly wouldn't lie ( or so we are told ).

>- Utter lack of skepticism and rush to believe whatever was being put out by the Administration.

There were skeptics. The "news" ( both the left and the right ) branded them traitors. Hell an entire nation and our oldest ally ( france ) was mercilessly caricatured and attacked. ( Remember freedom fries and surrender monkeys )?

It's standard practice. The media riles up the public, silences the opposition and off we go to another illegal war. We fall for it every single time.

> It pays American soldier salaries

It pays soldiers to do "useless" work. These same soldiers could have been working as construction workers, teachers, factory workers, etc doing something productive. Instead, they've spent their lives killing and getting PTSD.

> it buys products from American defense contractors that provide hundreds of thousands of jobs

Once again, non-productive goods. Instead of building missiles and bullets, the resources could have been used to build new trains for example.

> it funds R&D that trickles down to the rest of society.

Don't need war for R&D. R&D money was going to be spent regardless.

It's about the opportunity costs. Money spent well vs money spent poorly.

> they can immediately prescribe you Ambien which not only causes dementia and other neurological problems in long term use, but systematically makes people do absolutely batshit crazy things they'll never remember the next morning.

Not only that, the same psychiatrist might be getting kickbacks from the maker of ambien to peddle it to their clients.

>it is randomly decided by a few individuals

It isn't randomly decided. It's systematically decided by drug companies.

> Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly.

That's the assumption of google/youtube, facebook, microsoft, etc. Once you reach a dominant position, you don't have to care as much. You even see this with netflix.

> A random example... the cat litter I just purchased is $17.89 at Amazon, $13.49 at Walmart. Last week I bought a chair mat for $21.95 on Ebay - identical item on Amazon was $33.95 (both including free shipping but Amazon came with an additional 8.25% sales tax).

Bingo. Amazon used to be where the best prices were. Now so much of their products are more expensive than what you'd find in your local supermarket. And they are significantly more expensive.

A more important question is when will the new yorker and the rest of the media fix itself before it breaks democracy.

Seems like the new yorker's ( and most of the media's ) definition of "breaking democracy" is when people vote for candidates the new yorker doesn't like. So petty and immature.

Where were these stories the last 8 years? When obama used social media to win elections, social media was great. Now social media is the worst thing ever?

I pass by the New Yorker sign nearly everyday. I used to be impressed by it. Now it seems like a blight on manhattan. Hopefully, the new yorker is doing a better job of hiring their fact checker.

> Good. Because it doesn't threaten Free Speech as understood by virtually all democracies in the Western world

Not good. Most of the western world doesn't have free speech.

> it merely threatens the extremely expansive interpretation of Free Speech in America's First Amendment.

It isn't an "expansive" interpretation. It's the definition of free speech.

Your "western democracies" have the same understanding of free speech as saudi arabia, russia and china does ( aka "you are free to say things only we approve of" ). That's not free speech by any definition.

Besides, when it comes to things like free speech or human rights, one should err on the side of too much free speech or human rights rather than less.

You say it isn't facebook's fault and then go on to say they should be punished. Why should anyone be punished for something they didn't do?

Or they moved to instragram. That'll really show zuckerburg what's what.

> So you train for many years and acquire knowledge of a particular area and then what? You can't actually make money from the skill you learned?

Sure you can. But you shouldn't be regulating the companies you hope to work for.

If these people were angling to get cushy jobs for large banks, don't you think there is a conflict of interest there? And if you were large banks, wouldn't you tell these regulators you'd love to hire them for their "expertise" so that you get preferential treatment?

If you think these people were hired for their "expertise", that's naive. It's rewarding regulators for working for the banks interests and it's a signal to future regulators that they also will be taken care of if they "do the right thing".

Think about it. If you were going to regulate facebook, do you think it is smart to stack the regulatory board with people who want to work for facebook after the regulation is created? Don't you think that's a conflict of interest?

It's why I stopped going regularly. The smell and of course during winter, the constant coughing. But mostly the smell.

Wish libraries would be quicker about growing their online presence. I still don't know why they have stacks and stacks of books on shelves. And why do they have so many cds and dvds? Why not move it all online?

It's not that we are doomed to forget it. It's that humans ultimately don't care. We are selfish creatures.

The most obvious example is what the jews did to palestines in palestine/israel a few years after ww2. Look at what we did in vietnam/laos/iraq/etc. Look at what the chinese are doing to their minorities. Look at what happened in rwanda. Did we all forget ww2? Of course not.

The idea that we are doomed to repeat history if we forget it is nonsense. The nazis didn't forget about the history of the native genocide in the US. They actually studied it and they learned from it and they improved upon it.

Think about it, neo-nazis want to remember the past just as much as the holocaust survivors. But for different reasons.

As long as people have their creature comforts and are well fed and content, we'll pretend to be civilized and caring and charitable. When that gravy train dries up, we just resort to our natural tribal state.

Nobody forgot the native genocides, but the holocaust happened. Nobody forgot the holocaust, but the rwandan genocide happened.

> but at age 35 I’m really happy that my job involves serious adult challenges

Highly doubt that if you are commenting on a social media platform. What's an "adult" challenge?

> and that my success in life isn’t depending on thousands of teenagers pushing a like button.

Sure it does. From journalist to software programmers and everyone in between.

Thanks. Also, so many guardian stories all of a sudden.

> Maybe allow moderation at the sub-community level (as Reddit does with its subforums), but no centralised censorship

Reddit most definitely has centralized censorship. They have additional subreddit censorship left to the discretion of subreddit moderators.

Reddit, like most social media sites, have been slowly moving from intermediary platforms to edited platforms.

> 'Cause I think the likes of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter… would rather choose the "intermediary" path than risk taking legal responsibility for their enormous user base.

They prefer the intermediary position, but are pressured to act as editors by politicians and the news companies.

The smart thing to do is liquidate your investments and keep a nice pile of cash ready to reinvest when there is a bailout. And I guarantee you there will be a bailout.

Usually you will hear news of a bailout and the president will come out and tell people everything is okay so buy buy buy!

That's what Bush said a few weeks after the 9/11. That's what Obama said on the first friday of March 2009. Before the president speaks, the FED chair will give hints as well. I'm too young to remember what happened during the savings and loan crisis of the early 90s but I'm told something similar happened.

Just buy and hold and hold and hold. Crashes tend to be short lived. Recoveries take years and years.

Of course if you are greedy/ambitious, you could try to make money on the way down as well by shorting the market. But that's for the degenerate gamblers. Don't do it as it's nigh impossible to predict when the markets will crash and you may go broke betting against the market.

Which has been posted about on HN numerous times already.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14855796

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16245784

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15061484

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109328

It's amazing that even gq is now spamming HN.