ripb

I want some of whatever their investors are smoking.

Edit: Is it the smoke from all those dollar bills going up in those flames?

I already acknowledged that I'm a virtual nobody to them. I just don't want to be a virtual somebody to them, even if it's just a raised XKeyScore rating.

>Will you join me?

I wonder how many people are genuinely afraid of raising their own profile in such a way. I'm not American, but I would certainly be partaking in any political action against the actions being discussed here.

Although as it is, I'm very hesitant to even level criticism at the CIA on HN. I'm by no means an important person, but from what we've learned I don't even want to register on the radar of these entities.

>The war on terror, like all the metaphorical wars, is really a civil war. It needs to stop now.

There's too much money at stake for those at the top for this to be stopped. Lucrative contracts for all their buddies whether it's in consultancy or providing military hardware and software.

I mean the fact that congress keep ordering tanks the military themselves have proclaimed loudly that they neither want nor need should be setting off alarm bells everywhere, and yet it seems to just get brushed over.

>This is not about you. This is not about your data. This is about our society's collective ability to think and act for itself. Blanket acceptance of surveillance is a dangerous attitude and shockingly common.

It's also about the future of our society, that which our children have to grow up in and deal with.

I don't know how we'll be able to turn to our children in the coming decades and tell them "the government is monitoring everything you say through voice and text on your phone, every keystroke you make on your tablet or computer, every purchase you make on your phone or through your card in this inevitably cashless society, every connection you make on a connected device, everywhere your devices check in, connect to GPS or triangulate... oh and every camera you see out and about is recording you and facial recognition software is tagging it as you" with the justification for their complete lack of privacy being "there were some guys in the middle east riding around in pickup trucks with AK47s so we needed this to protect us".

We're at a pivotal point now and it's very much up to us which way it goes. Our governments are supposed to serve us but instead we live in a society where we are very much ruled, where our rulers are the elite and their ruling mechanism is the complete charade of representative democracy.

We'll all be dead before it gets too bad, thankfully, but our apathy will condemn our children and their descendants to a life under tyranny which we ushered in through theatrical politics, fear mongering and a bizarrely held belief of There Is No Alternative.

Is it just me or does there seem to be significantly more of a recode.net presence on HN at the moment?

I hadn't heard of the site until recently and now I've seen a few fairly low-brow articles from it on the front page here in the last 24 hours.

For the company. Depending on how it is implemented, taking a cut of the first 2 years' salary could be very high risk. Intuitively there seems to be little to stop someone taking the education and then absconding abroad.

I really like the innovative funding model, although intuitively it seems pretty high risk?

>Or are attention spans so short and/or the agency so completely removed from the rule of law that we're going to let them get away with their crimes? If we're not even going to bother with the trial - acknowledging that we won't even bother trying to maintain the rule of law - then I guess that's sufficient proof that we have lost our republic, as we let it be replaced with feudalism.

No, there will never be accountability for any of the gross abuses of the constitution, people's rights (including all those in the USA) and foreign "captives" physical and mental wellbeing highlighted in the NSA and CIA revelations.

Let's not kid ourselves. Representative democracy has shown itself to be a charade, particularly in the USA where you've two very similar entities who have billions pumped into them at election time to ensure no other entities have a shot at power, and then once elected those two very similar entities spend their time serving and protecting those that pumped in those billions.

The worst thing about it that I can't see any way out of it for the American people. The system is now so thoroughly stacked against them that any attempt at radical change - whether it's passive through the political system or more active through protests or at worst a revolution - will be very rapidly quashed. As a European I absolutely loathe that this very same, corrupted, abusive entity - the US Government - is reaching its tentacles into our governing and is now vying for power here via the TTIP and similar.

>to drum up more support for killing people an ocean away

To drum up more support for pumping billions or trillions of dollars borrowed from America's descendants into the pockets of the US elite via the military industrial complex.

Don't like it? You're welcome to protest but make sure you do it in the designated "free speech zone" over there, well away from those you're holding the protest against.

Oh and while you're doing it we'll increase the attention we give your NSA profile, everything you look at online, your emails, everyone you've ever interacted with in a trackable way and more. Can't have you radicals trying to upset the system the elite rely on, after all.

I find it amazing that people seemingly don't know that Facebook tracks you across the web through those embedded Like buttons, and more amazing that many who do know don't seem to care.

>It seems that for most people total calories are more important than the carbohydrate/fat-ratio.

It's also relatively easier to track. It's easy to say "Well, I can consume about 2000 calories per day, this donut has about 300 so I'll have roughly 1700 calories left", but it's quite difficult to know the breakdown of how much carbs/protein/fat should be consumed within those 2000 calories and more difficult again to plan and monitor for those values.

>I think Twitter would have stopped these much earlier if they could.

If Twitter clamped down on bots on the site/network it could end up revealing a very unflattering (to investors) picture of the sites true user traction.

The site has struggled to grow to its targets and has a significant issue with people creating accounts and quickly abandoning the site.

So Twitter has a very large incentive to do nothing about the bots.

>If you are enabling a surveillance state, I think many people would consider that to be harmful to public welfare.

I honestly do not know how those working for the NSA, GCHQ, etc. can live with themselves for the damage they're doing. Snowden said he was getting something like $120k p/a as a consultant for the NSA, so it's not like it's massively financially lucrative.

>It's not being thrown at the tech industry. It's people within the industry calling out the problem that we have. It's very telling that you think of the industry as a community under siege.

Actually, the vast majority of it is being carried out by people on the fringe of the industry in roles as "journalists" and similar who've never spent a day working within it.

And yes, I see the tech industry as being under siege.

It's such a shame that we have the lives of such smart people being sucked up by such a vacuous, socially value-less and damaging industry.

There are more women than men in employment in the US, where is the daily articles on that? And the effort to tackle that? And the constant shaming of companies that employ more women than men?

There are 1.4x the amount of women graduating college than men. Where are the daily articles on that massive issue? Where is the effort to do something about that? Where is the constant headlines on how many more women are graduating than men, put in a very negative light as the lack of quote underlined "diversity" in the tech industry is?

This absolute, unrelenting and incredibly transparent (tech = money, status currently) narrative being sharted at everyone in the tech industry on a daily basis is driving me toward getting out of it altogether.

But hey, lets ignore some massive issues on the table in favour of constantly debating why women who never showed an interest in the industry can't pick and choose the finest and most well paid positions in that industry and see where that gets society in 10 years' time.

Wages vs salary

In the UK it's basically if you work for wages and/or in low skilled or manual labour.

>Btw we are working class too, even with those fancy 6 figure salaries...

No, we're not. We're the down trodden, continually squeezed middle or upper middle class depending on the cost of living where you are.

Well SF is clearly saturated with people working in the tech industry. As we're seeing more and more on HN, there's a huge amount of people in the tech industry who are in it for reasons that do not include a passion for technology, writing code or developing things.

So you've a huge amount of people fairly dissatisfied with what they're doing 40+ hours a week, in an area full of similar people, and who have the disposable income and time to look for more in life outside of those 40+ hours.

So it's not surprising more cultural/outdoor/etc. things are flooded with people from the tech industry in SF, I suppose, where elsewhere they would be both less people in the industry and those that are would be slightly better geographically dispersed.

It's quite likely that many of his choices regarding non-programming hobbies have been highly influenced by programmers/tech people around him in the workplace or outside it.

He also likely has developed biases, not on socioeconomic grounds but through his own experiences and influences, regarding certain things in society. Football, for example, he probably consciously or subconsciously regards as being something for "jocks" or the people he didn't get along with in school (presumption here).

Ultimate frisbee, however, is probably something he regards as being in-line with that with which those that influence him partake in, or that which he imagines his peers (mainly techies) would approve of.

It's an ok article from the point of it being a look at someone's personal experience, but it's certainly more reflective of his experience and the bubble he lives in than a commentary on society.

>(That's not to say that you should stay in an unfulfilling job forever - just that you should make hay while the sun is shining).

I agree. I'm almost 30 myself and have been living quite extravagantly as you say. I'm hoping to spend my 30s building sufficient wealth that by my early 40s I'll have a passive income sufficient enough to let me essentially retire to somewhere nice where I can spend my time on self-actualization.

It's interesting that more of this kind of content keeps coming up on HN, it seems that many of us are tiring of the "rat race". I hope I treat the next decade in the right manner so that I'm not looking at HN submissions on self-actualization or breaking the mold in 10 years and regretting not having done things.

>Every life event he describes here is a movement to extremes out of frustration or anxiety from what he was currently doing. I'm sure there's much more to this story, but if anything, this is an example of how peace of mind can't be found on either ends of a see-saw.

He has balls, I'll give him that, and I don't see any problem with changing things - even very large things like ones career - in order to find what makes you happy and makes your life feel fulfilling.

I'm finding that I don't have that in me. The thought of leaving a well paid, comfortable and regularly challenging job in software development, even if it's not the passion that fuels life for me personally, for a future of uncertainty is far too daunting for me to take action and "try something new".

Maybe that's deeply seated in how I perceive myself and others to judge those who do try, and sometimes fail at trying, their hand at other things along the way? I don't know, but at this point in life I commend anyone who tries to break the mold we've been pretty much set into since we were teenagers.

Their taxes are theirs. It's through generosity that social programs are created and paid for through the general revenue.

Although admittedly it has now backfired, as it's now easier to have children on welfare than it is for many working would-be parents.

The working class WILL stop working and in the very near future, as basic jobs such as checkout staff, or taxis, become automated. It's an impending crisis.

What are you taking issue with? Keep in mind we're discussing the UK.

You've hit the nail on the head, brainpan.

>But we all just quit that notion before we start

Don't forget we also denounce and ridicule anyone who tries to live outside the system we have constructed and rely on.

>The middle class are damned if they do, damned if they don't by the author's argument.

And yet if the middle class ask their representatives to scale back the very same social programs that provide the uber cool, uber cultural working and welfare classes that the author is idolizing here they are demonized in the extreme.

Sure, the middle class give the working and welfare class schools, access to universities, free healthcare, lots of cash welfare, houses to live in cost free and lots more, but don't you know that they're literally the devil incarnate? Who do they think they are to have parties in warehouses? That's what we do when we've claimed our welfare for the week! Those damned culture vultures!

While I connect with and appreciate many of the points he has made, I have to say I'm getting pretty damn tired of the almost constant attack on the white middle class person from left-wing journalists.

You are damned if you do and damned if you don't with these journalists, many of whom are middle class or higher white people themselves who've simply developed somewhat of a hardon for self-loathing.

If rich young techies in San Francisco took their money and went and lived in areas already established as being the dwelling of the rich they would face criticism from these journalists for isolating themselves, not investing in the community, etc.

If rich young techies go and buy up property in previously poor areas, attract businesses to serve their needs, etc. they're damned for gentrifying the area and driving the culture out.

The only way it seems that these people would be satisfied is if the value creators simply went to work every day and created value and the output was distributed across the entirety of society, regardless of contribution...which in a very unfair way places all of society's burdens at the feet of the working current middle class even more than they currently are.

I'm a white, middle class software developer. I tend to go for these kind of things such exhibitions in warehouses, quirky restaurants and bars, etc. I don't do it to appropriate culture, I do it because it's more interesting to me than sterile, obviously very well financed restaurants and bars that charge you huge amounts of money to sit in a room packed with suits desperately trying to impress other people.

I'm not trying to take from below, I'm trying to find things of some substance that I'll enjoy and will likely find other people that I can connect with at.

Again, these hit pieces are pretty damn tiring. Who is it whose paying the bulk of the taxes to sustain the free schools the working and welfare classes send their kids to? Who is it that is making the finance available so that working class, welfare class, etc. can access third level education as those above them can? Who is it that is paying the bulk of the costs associated with those universities? Who is it that is covering the welfare that those in the welfare class are currently surviving on? And those in the working class whose manual jobs are quickly becoming redundant?

Who is it that is paying the vast bulk of the costs associated with providing the welfare and working classes with access to healthcare they absolutely otherwise would not be able to afford?

The middle class.

>it surprises me that it is popular on a forum relating to startups and technology

The culture they discuss in the article is highly applicable to the home of the modern startup though - San Francisco.