tokenizer

>Personally, I think pointing out how casual racism is tolerated and ignored in certain situations is quite a bit more useful than the other comments on this article.

The real ignorance spawned when you compare Asians (multi-racial, genetically diverse, many cultures) with black people (colour of skin). That is racist. You are generalizing a continent of people into one homogenous ethnicity.

Of course the author wouldn't group "black people" into a category. Firstly, "black people" are the most genetically diverse group of people on the planet. Africa is also home to again, many, many cultures.

I think you attempting to be PC, has clouded your judgement. Look at your upvote/downvote ratio. Do you believe most people are just "ignorant" to your "valid and true" beliefs on political correctness? You said it yourself that this is just casual racism. And to many (including me) it wasn't that at all. If anything, you were the one who brought race and conflict into this discussion. Ask yourself if you're truly right.

The story is simple. Apple got sold out of their gold iphones in parts of Asia. You're right, everybody likes gold. They state that in the article. Let's see the articles sources shall we?

> gold in Asia is perhaps even more fetishized than in the West.

Wow, talk about bias! Perhaps!?!?!?

> said Mr. Lian, who works at a local TV station. "Chinese people like gold."

What?!?! A Chinese person generalizing their society?!?!? Hold the phone. We got a self hater here says mikeash...

Now this is just hurrible... Of course this POS article doesn't have contrary opinions... Oh Wait!

> 28-year-old Chris Wong who works in marketing. “I think the metal casing looks much better.”

And there you have it. A different opinion.

But yes. The article is racist. I'm racist. The people who downvoted you are racist. The whole word is racist. How about you take your white knighting to tumbler social warrior! We'll miss you!!!!

Thanks for the ray of logic.

Personally, I find it more offensive when people get offended by non offensive things than by ignorant generalizations, like grouping all Asians into a race, by grouping all black people into a culture, by mixing up culture and race (this one is tricky however), etc..

That you're just making threads toxic with your white knight attitudes.

Saying that BI is racist because they generalize the Asian market is what's wrong with the world. Not only do you generalize an entire continent by reducing it to race (racist against all Asian races?), but you then go on about how they can't generalize.

Almost all markets generalize. They need to. It's how you do business. If target age 24-32 female, white, etc...

Stop being such a white knight and attempt to read the article and bring valid points up for discussion instead of derailing it and wasting many a programmers time.

> Americans are going crazy over the gold iPhone too.

That's racist!

^ This is what you sound like ITT...

Nope. But I don't have facebook, so that may be why.

Good for you. I'm usually apart of the libertarian crowd of qualifications: You prove you're capable with example, not credential.

This is due to my view of the cost of college, and my success in IT without higher learning credentials. That said, I would definitely give advice to young adults now that if they are going to college, they should either go for their masters/doctorate, or an advanced bachelors like nursing, law, or engineering. Anything else is just a waste of money. Everything you said about bachelor degrees is spot on.

Good point. I would guess it's just one more pound to the weight of surveillance.

>But start using your fingerprint to unlock it and suddenly it's oh no the gubmint is going to steal our precious bodily fluids! It makes no sense.

It kind of makes sense. Biometrics are a whole different discipline in security and identification. It's harder to spoof, and while not really necessary for the lowly consumer, will increase their device security.

That said, you can't just say it makes no sense for any outrage when you take into account the current political hot buttons of the day: NSA's breach of trust, Rising "Inverted Totalitarianism" within the government, the lack of trust in corporate entities, etc.

It's a matter of trust. If you can't trust either a corporation or government, then this amount of open access seems scary. You may not be scared, but to dismiss others people's concern as not valid proves you're not obviously sympathetic to their viewpoint.

I think you're right. Even moving your mail or web server to another country won't help deter the actual collection with prism.

However, I think responses like this create tension between the companies agreeing to give their information, and the government. If google, yahoo, and facebook start to lose money they might potentially fight legislation like this going forward and may advocate in reverting these policies.

I would also argue that in terms of maintenance, it would be more time consuming for me to debug native html, css, and javascript, and then fix those bug in a completely different environment.

Yup, add to the fact that the author is an academic (Adjunct/Research Associate/Vice President). No bias there I assume...

>""He tells the story of a high school teacher whose students confronted him with the same question: "Why do we need to learn this?" The teacher replied, "You don't. You need to learn to ask just one question." The piqued students implored him to tell what that was. His answer: "Would you like fries with that?""

This is deplorable. As someone who didn't go to college, the fact that the author acts like they're right because of the status quo, and because Thiel's first start-ups weren't successful is absolutely laughable.

I love how their main argument relies on the fact that the perception of the degree is what's most important. While this may be true, this is simply a perception, and can easily be changed. It's not a "fact".

Secondly, if Thiel's lack of success from his ventures proves anything, it's that he needs work finding the right people to invest in. Just because a small subset of adventurous young adults failed their first time (understandable) doesn't mean that all young adults need the experience of college before they can fail/succeed in their first venture.

Lastly, let's see if the author is bias. Well, they're an academic, are adjuncts in two colleges... I find it interesting that an Academic intellectual has a problem understanding that people can be didactic learners and learn what they want on their own.

"Would you like fries with that?" - Sure, I'd love to buy some fries with my great job that I got right out of high school because I ACTUALLY worked towards my craft in high school. I doubt you can do that with an English, Psychology, Sociology, or even a regular Science degree. What this really sounds like is that college is important if you want to become an engineer. That's obvious. Most other things? Not so much.

But that seems impossible. Most men I know that program have general social problems, not just relating to women. The field itself is of interest to the slightly colder, and more rational mindset.

I'm not saying we can't fix this problem. We can do that by hiring more well rounded people for programming positions. The same type of male techie who would mistreat a woman at the workplace, would mistreat a man too. I don't necessarily think being odd is wrong as long as you're not hurting someone.

Personally it's the tech industries fault in general, which continues to pander to the academic and elitist groupings to foster talent, which is in and of itself unequal. Add to the fact that these groupings contain their own patriarchal problems and the picture becomes even more complex. Personally I don't feel like we need 50% women in the tech industry. I feel like everyone should be given an equal chance at learning as many skills as possible in a fostering learning environment. The fact that schools, parents, etc don't accomplish this can't all be blamed on the industry itself. Many engineering subjects suffer from these larger societal problems that relate with entrenched social roles and patriarchal institutions.

Making the average Joe reading hacker news aware of these problems are important, but laying the blame on all men, or even a subset larger than a choice few who benefit from the systemic patriarchal tendencies in unfair however. The core issue is equality. And society isn't equal. This is more of an effect than a primary problem.

I think you're right. They're still in the baby boomer - brand is everything - mindset. At least she'll have a website where she can post her conference schedules and ebooks.

But seriously, anyone who thinks facebook will be important 10 years from now doesn't know anyone aged 14 to 18. Many articles like this are popping up: http://business.time.com/2013/03/08/is-facebook-losing-its-c...

I don't think parents can truly understand that their kids don't want to be on the same "network" as some of them.

P.S. - Doesn't apply to the flock, just the shepherds. The flock will follow when they feel it's necessary.

Short answer? You appreciate context over content. Anything and everything can be content. But not everything can be contextually meaningful.

Take what I had for diner. Should I post that on HN? Absolutely not. Not contextually relevant. What about a blog post on Angular JS modules? Now that makes sense.

If facebook has a context like HN, or a meaningful way of identifying it like Reddit, then it has been lost on me. I mean, facebook's context is that it's an address book for your local social group right? So that must mean the context is contextually dependent on that right? I don't think that's 100% true. Facebook imparts it's own context. Which is basically sharing is caring. So it's context is basically content!

Long answer? Not sure...

I don't think so. Modern technology allows instant gratification for social contracts from anywhere in the world. It makes us more dependent on each other, and it also allows for long term storage when you then put this in junction with recording devices.

You're right that people have also been widely varied in their preferences with social contact, but for lack of a better argument than an appeal to nature, this is different, and we don't know what the consequences are. At least the older ways of contacting people were time tested before the phone.

The problem with your world view is that it doesn't take into account any major negative influences.

What if you gained 20 pounds? Or lost your boyfriend to your close friend? What has normally be associated with the family is now associated with the village, and that adds a lot of stress to people's lives.

Another problem is the us versus them that this group has enforces on people like me. I think I'm a pretty cool person, but if we met, I wouldn't have a facebook account to share with you. Would that affect your opinion of me? Maybe not, but I've had people comment negatively to it, and have even read articles proclaiming it affecting people economically due to potential social expectations now set by employers.

To me, it's a destructive force and a tool. A real-time chatting/messaging service that connects to an address list. And a new social experiment leading people down a path of "true" social alienation and narcissism.

I don't doubt that some people can use the tool responsibly, but it also leaves much to be desired for.

I don't have a facebook account, and I find the idea of using it for keeping in touch with past acquaintances not very alluring and frankly a diatribe.

You're not supposed to focus so much on other people's lives. Instead of people growing into better people through self defined improvement, people now seek gratification through others and their acknowledgment. Instead of going to a concert with a few choice friends and living in the experience, some just anxiously try to record the moment, which has ironically been lost with the vision of the future.

Don't ask me what the optimum amount of social contact and level is for a person, but suffice to say what people are currently doing is not it.

I don't see how this is a discussion. His point is completely valid, and holds true for many things.

If you were to become a public speaker/motivational speaker in Canada, then not being able to be understood in either English or French would affect your career.

It seems to me like everybody is caught up in the semantics of whether pointing this out is politically correct or not. I personally think it doesn't matter, and if you're truly committed on creating a startup in the US, you'll have to just persevere regardless of the opinions, as this is just a remark on data.

The United States (Government) are a bunch of unenlightened, racist, xenophobic people bent on oppressing people by treating every non english/anglo-saxon as a terrorist. Please, someone tell me this isn't the case in an absolute sense.

Steve Pavlina had taken the schedule up and had wrote about it in some detail. Not what you'd considered peer reviewed but definitely a first hand experience akin to Buckminster Fuller's experience with the attempt at a polyphasic sleep schedule.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/

You'll be waiting about 35 years then.

So will this bypass prism-like surveillance methods?

> One day I think we will look back on democracy as we do upon kings now.

Yup. Personally, I think tolerance and total pacifism would be needed in this next evolutionary step, so it'll probably take a few wars for us to be tired of conflict...

I can already see many young people being disillusioned by politics, war, and nationalism. But many still adhere to those ideologies as well.

Hello sliverstorm. I'm an anarchist. I don't want to tell you how to think at all but I seriously recommend this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5PbLLBfiM8

It's fairly non biased, and explains what you're asking. Its position is more on anarcho-capitalism (what most of the world/our day to day consists of) while most anarchists will believe in collective labour and possession only property.

You're probably right. I'm definitely an idealist but I'm an odd case. I believe in total pacifism and confederate municipalism. I also believe that good only comes from grief. We'll have to die/suffer/make a lot more mistakes if we're going to be able to function as a consensus based anarchy.

Don't get me wrong, you're right. It is even legally, but not in nominal terms of value. If I do front end web development for 15$ an hour, but am sold to a customer for 150$ an hour, there's no question in terms of value that the arrangement is unfair. As for your point regarding business success, that's not really my call nor do I have a say. How can I accept losses on behalf of another employee's decision? Surely I'd be fired for bringing in less value than I was earning in the role mentioned.

Exactly, even though it's not really "even" considering they're profiting off your work (unless you're a necessary evil). I guess you get some other perks if you're not bound to a horrible contract, like paid sick time and vacation.

Personally, I go about things in the same way, but hope I get a union job I just applied for. IMO, that changes the whole solidarity/loyalty relationship.

I curious if they did any cost benefit analysis in regards to declines in hiring quality when they removed such a feature.

And that my friend is why Anarchy or Libertarian Socialism is the only choice for proper governance.