yakitori

> Have you ever met a teenager?

Yes. And we've all been teenagers.

>Almost literally zero percent of them think (or need to think) about this stuff, with the possible exception of some of the very oldest teenagers (ie, people in their first or second year of college who are starting to think about the details of the start of their careers).

What? EVERY teenager thinks about it. Not only that, their parents financial situations and the prospects of the future most definitely influences their outlook.

What teenager doesn't talk about or think of their future? The entirety of high school is pretty much about preparing for college, finding a job, etc.

>"Look at all these rich beautiful people with millions of followers sailing around the world on their yachts."

How is this any different than society at large? How is this any different from TV and newspapers?

> Ten minutes on Instagram is enough to fill any sane person with existential dread and bring about severe depression.

Ten minutes on HN is enough considering all the fear mongering being pushed here.

And most people who use instagram are not severely depressed. Go figure. Wonder why that is"?

Thank god for our daily "social media" is evil propaganda. I hope one day someone looks into who is pushing this and why. It would be very interesting. At this point, all the outrage and propaganda really comes off as manufactured and fake.

Maybe it's a generational thing. When I was a child, it was south park, simpsons and gangsta rap that was ruining kids mental health. And video games were responsible for school shootings and all of life's ills.

For my parents generation, it was TV, rock and roll and marijuana.

Something always has to be wrong in order for the media to sell advertising to us I guess.

If anything is leading to our collective mental health deterioration, it's the constant media barrage on tv, newspapers and social media telling us that we are depressed. But fear is what sells.

> (I am squeamish!)

Then why'd you go on a safari?

> Nature is cruel.

Nature isn't cruel. Nature is ambivalent.

> When Steve Yegge just moved to Google, his final posts were about encouraging his readers to work on Big Things like the cure for cancer instead of cat videos. And now his Big Thing is food delivery?

It's where the money is. Online food delivery is growing ridiculously and still have tons of room for growth since it is following the growth of smartphones and the rise of "online taxis". It isn't just food delivery. Grocery delivery, liquor delivery and all other delivery services haven't caught up to smartphone/online taxi service yet.

It's similar to what amazon did with their AWS. Most of their servers were idle. So why not turn that unused capacity for productive use. If you think about it, most taxis ( even online taxis ) are in idle state. So why not use that idle time for delivery.

Also slogans from large corporations or people working for multinationals are just PR nonsense. "Do no evil", "fair and balanced", "just do it", etc are marketing PR rubbish. Steve Yegge, like alphabet, is in the business of making money.

Cancer research is high risk/high reward. Food delivery is low risk/high reward.

Wasn't forbes banned here because they had malware in their ads which infected a bunch of people and because most of their stuff is behind paywall?

Why doesn't theguardian bosses read newspapers so much? Because they are too busy running the company and trying to make money? Do I get to write an article for the guardian now?

The obvious reason social media execs don't use social media as much is because they are too busy. It's the same reason that movie execs don't watch many movies, it's why football execs don't' watch too much football games, it's why newspaper execs don't read much newspapers, etc.

Most top execs are busy running a company to be doing anything else. But theguardian along with the rest of the media has to spin everything for their own agenda.

Would be great if we went a few days without the standard "I hate social media" from the toxic "traditional media".

> Where does it say that they don't though?

It doesn't.

> Make it sound like the article is just about bashing social medias

Every day the media releases propaganda against social media. On HN, we get a "social media/facebook" is responsible for all the ills of the world nonsense routinely followed by the same suspicious "I quick facebook and I won the lottery" style comments.

If you feel like, check HN on the waybackmachine or any other archive site and you'll see.

The obvious reason social media execs don't use social media as much is because they are too busy. It's the same reason that movie execs don't watch many movies, it's why football execs don't' watch too much football games, it's why newspaper execs don't read much newspapers, etc.

Most top execs are busy running a company to be doing anything else. But theguardian along with the rest of the media has to spin everything for their own agenda.

There are 3 nytimes article on the frontpage already. 2 of which are questionable HN type of articles. Do we need a 4th?

Who keeps bumping nytimes articles to the frontpage?

But isn't the sheep's head delicious while the shark tastes rancid? At least that's what I heard.

> I would never let my manager into my Linux systems, just to make an analogy. I give my manager a report on what's going on but I'd never let them in.

I'm not sure about the chain of command in your company but in most companies, managers don't need permission from their charges for access. Managers are the ones who give their underlings access.

Granted, in most tech infrastructure, only a handful of people might have direct access to production/sensitive assets like databases, file, web, etc servers. And managers wouldn't want to muck around on production servers. But the idea that you wouldn't let your manager access or that they couldn't get access if require seems very odd. What happens if you quit or get fired? If your manager wanted access and you refused, he has the power to fire you.

> Yet these top directors are able to get access to essentially any database or system just because of their title.

Depending on their role, directors of any company can get access to anything because they act as the ultimate arbiters on behalf of the shareholders. The chairman of the board is who the CEO of companies report to.

Sure, you wouldn't want people who don't know the systems to gain access. But I'd be interested to know how a low level employee can prevent their manager or even directors from access if they wanted it.

Most of the news industry is unionized. LA Times was an anomaly.

> I have an intense personal dislike of smoking.

If you ever lived in an apartment with a neighbor who smokes, it turns from intense personal dislike to pure hate. I will never understand how people can smoke in their homes. It literally turns your house into an ashtray.

> I'm no fan of vaping, but as an intermediate step to the elimination of smoking, it is a necessary evil.

Unless it turns out to be more toxic.

The problem I see is that society seems to turning away from cigarettes and more towards weed and other type of obnoxious drug use.

> This is some fantastic clickbait.

That describe almost everything on HN now.

Half black man. His father was european and his mother was a black slave. Though he may be socially/culturally black, he was genetically half white. But I don't expect much integrity from the atlantic.

That out of the way, it is biologically and statistically impossible to recreate a person's DNA that far back because every generation, a portion of an ancestor's genes are lost. You get about 50% of your mother's genes and 50% of your father's genes.

Also, you didn't need to "reconstruct" a portion of the maternal genome to find out the lineage. All you needed was the X chromosome of one of the descendents to get an idea of where the slave ancestor came from.

Beyond that, you don't really need a DNA test since most slaves in the americas came from west africa - predominantly nigeria/cameroon/benin region.

Sometimes it's so hard for me to determine whether half of the stuff on HN is real news or just advertisement.

A news feed for 300M is child's play when you consider that the content is pretty much static.

"Go and RocksDB and Raft" hit all the keywords but what makes this post relevant for HN?

> The identity of those who help you achieve those goals doesn't matter as much (very few people care about the skin color of someone who saves their life).

This is not true. Color lines were reinforced in ww2. It didn't recede. Black soldiers were routinely attacked by white soldiers. And japanese american soldiers couldn't serve in the pacific for a variety of reasons ( including being killed by their fellow white american soldiers ) and in europe, japanese soldiers were essentially killed off by their own white commanders in suicide attacks. Feel free to look up the death rates of japanese american soldiers in europe. It's horrendous. Pretty much a war crime.

Race riots occurred between american white and black soldiers in australia, britain, etc. Feel free to google battle of bamber bridge or the battle of brisbane.

The civil rights movement happened because ww2 WORSENED race relations, not made it better. And with the advent of tremendous economic wealth, people were more willing to confront the race relations.

The civil rights movement was a result of more racism, not less and the wealthy post-ww2 country which provided the environment where people were willing to consider civil rights. You could argue that the post-ww2 economic prosperity had more to do with the civil rights movement than anything else.

No comments on such an important topic on an anonymous hacker news forum?

"Feminist Majority Foundation" should be careful about what they wish for. Because feminism has benefited tremendous from anonymous discussion and anonymous support. For much of the world and even in much of the US, feminism is a reviled term and ideology.

I think you have an idealized view of journalism and media that doesn't align with reality. Kick backs, side deals, "back scratching", etc has always existed in journalism and media. And it's not just journalists. The owners of media companies and editors also trade influence for money, access, etc. It's not just with brands/advertising, this also applies to their coverage of politics, sports, etc.

> It's worth remembering that MK Ultra was officially running until 1973 and broke exactly the same rules as the Tuskegee trials.

It isn't just scientific experimentation. Forced sterilization without consent was carried out in the US on puerto ricans, natives, blacks, etc for decades after ww2. Canada also forcibly sterilized their natives well into the 1970s as did the australians on the aborigines.

> I'm not from the US, and I can tell you that incidents like this are major stumbling blocks when the US asks other countries to trust it as "the leader of the Free World".

It isn't a stumbling block since most of the "free world" is complicit as well. And the rest of the world is too poor or simply unawares of our misdeeds to care.

Besides, we are the leader of the "free" world because we are the sole military superpower, not because we are the most "free" or "good".

Has nothing to do with phones or being present. It has to do with the fact that someone has a knife. Unless you are armed with a gun, you also won't do anything against a guy with a knife.

Go read about the knife attack on van gogh or any other knife attack. When someone is crazy and wielding a knife, you back away. I forget which world class MMA fighter said it, but he said that if anyone approaches him with a knife, he'd run. That's a world class MMA fighter.

There was an interesting podcast on the guy who stabbed a kid on a bus in canada. As the guy was stabbing the kid, everyone on the bus fled. And then 3 guys got together and decided to board the bus and try to save the kid. When the three guys got back on the bus, the guy showed his knife to the 3 men and they all just left and waited for the police like everyone else.

Also, what's with a vocal minority on HN blaming anything and everything on smartphones and social media? I swear in the past few months, it feels like every HN story with a smartphone or social media angle is being targeted to push an agenda.

Edit: Found the podcast ( sword and scale ep 31 ). Really fascinating podcast and worth a listen if you have the time.

> Are you truly having a hard time understanding how life under a Communist dictatorship and a Representative Democracy would differ for the average citizen?

The difference aren't that great. The most heavily surveiled society on earth is britain.

> It's really confounding to me that the younger generations seems to have such a hard time with this.

And it's confounding how the older generation thinks the west is any better.

> Do they not teach comparative history in schools anymore?

They do but just a lot better than they did in the past.

Who buys $1000 sunglasses? Who buys $1000 jeans? Who buys $500 sneakers? Dumb people with too much money.

Just like NFL/NBA owners. Threaten to take the team to another city.

> Building tunnels under a river isn't simple.

It's fairly simple as it is a 200 year old technology. It's not rocket science. What's not simple is how to divide the taxpayer money between the elites.

Why are you being downvoted? What you said is true.

> Also, the Arab world is arguably worse off... Invented much of math

This is historically not true. Sure we get terms like "algebra", "algorithm", etc from the arab world, but the arab world didn't invent these mathematics ideas/fields. These ideas/fields go back to the mesopotamia and ancient greece. Also, the mathematical concepts developed throughout china, india, etc also.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_algebra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithm

Certainly the arab world made contributions to math but they certainly didn't invent most of math.

> and is now dominated by ascientific theocracies

Even during the islamic golden age, it was dominated by "ascientific" theocracies. One doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the other.

> But why?

It'll lower oil prices? Boost manufacturing in the US and around the world. It's buttresses the stock boom and keep the economy growing? At least for the short term. Internationally, it'll continue to put significant economic pressure on russia, venezuela and even saudi arabia to behave.

> Oil price is low as fuck right now.

It isn't low. It isn't high. Low is 2 or 3 years ago when oil prices got into the 20s. It's in the middle as has been for a while.

> Better keep it in the ground for later.

Why? If the current market can handle it? Besides, it's not like we are going to run out of oil.

Ultimately, trump is doing this because it'll be great for the economy in the short term and hence great for his election bid in 2.5 years. But there are host of other reasons for it as well.

> Or do you simply hope fascist ideas don't take hold?

Free speech exists to protect speech when fascists take hold. It's why no matter who is president of the US, we can spew all the hate we want. Unlike in germany where speech is dependent on who is in charge. If fascists take over and then decide anti-fascist speech is hate speech, then germans are screwed. Whereas in america, if fascists take over, they are screwed because we have free speech in america.

> The former is a scary slippery slope but Germany doesn't have a great track record with the latter.

Germany doesn't have a good track record because they always had "hate speech" laws. Hitler was able to censor everything because the german government always had the the power to censor "hate speech".

Hitler would never had been able to do what he did if the german government didn't have powers to shut down all political parties and censor all "hate speech".

Imagine if we had a culture of censorship in the US and hate speech was banned. Then trump become president and his government decides anything critical of trump is hate speech.

That's only modern times and it only applies to societies with contraception and women's right and most importantly, women's education.

For most of history, women weren't educated and there wasn't reliable contraception and hence they all had many babies.

Also, kings/nobility in the past had concubines and consorts who produced children as well.

> The poor traditionally have much larger families.

Also, wealth really doesn't factor into family sizes anywhere today. Poor educated women have less children than wealthy uneducated women.

For some reason, the more educated women are, the less likely they are to have many babies. This is a trend that holds in europe, the US, japan, south korea, etc across all wealth levels.