zolthrowaway

If my comment was a little ad hominem, I apologize.

I watched my parents struggle growing up. My dad worked in a steel mill. My mom cut hair and cleaned businesses after work. I never saw them not busy. They made a ton of sacrifices to keep a roof over my head and food on the table.

Getting an ID would not have been a simple task for them. We lived in public housing and we walked almost everywhere. I watched them struggle to get by every day and to hear someone say "just do something" really makes me upset. It's not that simple. Their life was planned down to the minute. Work, walking me home, second job, making dinner, managing finances down to the penny, etc.

All that I am saying is, it's not that simple. People are in some really shitty situations despite doing everything right. Making it harder for these people to vote (who already have trouble finding the time to get to the polls) is just fundamentally wrong in my opinion.

Have you ever been poor? Have you ever been poor and had kids?

It's not as simple as taking a 15 minute drive to the DMV and waiting in line. Many of these people lack access to proper transit systems to get to these places. At least where I live, the DMV is open during normal business hours which may be impossible to get to without taking time off of work. Many of these people are paid hourly which makes this a financial decision as well. It's really hard to miss an hour of work when that could be food or rent.

It's really hard to come up with a solution when large swaths of the country or totally opposed to anything that slightly resembles a national ID. While I agree that we could probably be doing something, it's not as simple as telling everyone to go to the DMV.

Yes. Gallup does this ever year. It's been over 60% for the last two years[1].

[1] http://news.gallup.com/poll/221018/record-high-support-legal...

I'm not sure that phones fit into this paradigm very well. First, having a phone is almost a necessity. Note that I did not say smartphone, but having a device that receives calls and texts is something that nearly every functioning adult will have.

Secondly, many people treat their phone more as a lease than an outright purchase. Carriers provide a ton of options to upgrade your phone regularly that could easily cause low-use users to habitually upgrade every 2 years or so.

Lastly, Apple phones in particular seem to be seen as a luxury. Luxury sales aren't necessarily tied to frequency of use. For example, I have a set of name brand golf clubs that I touch maybe 5 times a summer.

I am definitely not saying that you are wrong, but there are a lot of compounding factors to this. Phones are a fairly unique market.

It's at least partially fear. Fear can get people to do crazy things. Combine this with the fact that many people are totally tech illiterate (think about some of the elderly who call their grandkids every time they need to check their email). I don't think it's very hard to see how something like this can happen.

We can agree to disagree then. I think your opinion is reasonable and I can understand where you are coming from.

To me personally, however, this is a very bad smell. They have shown that they will push unrelated code as a Shield Study. This faux pas was signed off by a Firefox Product Manager, Data Steward, Legal, QA, Release Management, AMO review and a member of the core Shield Team [1]. If none of these members realized it was a bad idea, I have lost all faith in their product development. If it wasn't signed off by those members, there is a major red flag about who has the ability to add these types of things and/or their processes.

Either marketing has too much say, they have poor processes, or they are totally out of touch with their user base. These all raise red flags for me. I can't feel confident knowing that there is no spyware in my browser.

Mike Conley a Mozilla dev commented on the bug ticket, "I am also curious about this. I have been asking around, and have not yet found a single Firefox peer that was involved with this in either implementation or review."[2] Everything about this was handled incredibly poorly. I will wait for the postmortem, but currently I don't have a lot of faith in Mozilla or their processes.

[1]https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Shield/Shield_Studies [2]https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1424977

It would be easier for me to use Chrome. All of my coworkers use Chrome. Before Quantum, Chrome had better performance [1]. Chrome is everywhere. I have to test my web apps on Chrome regardless of whether it is my primary browser or not.

I'm not saying I'm leaving Firefox, but I am going to reevaluate which browser I choose. Mozilla lost a lot of trust from me and I am going to reevaluate how I interact with their products.

If supported, mainstream, and clean of spyware are the three boxes you are trying to check and you still feel Firefox checks them, great. But, now is as good of a time as any to reevaluate why you are using a browser and if the browser really meets what you are looking for.

[1] https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-browser-interne...

I wholeheartedly disagree. It is a security issue, privacy issue, as well as many other types of issues.

Installing an extension without my permission is a privacy issue. It doesn't matter what that extension does. It doesn't matter if that extension is literally just an icon on a tray or if it literal spyware. It doesn't matter if it was ever enabled. You can't claim to be privacy conscious and then do something like that.

Exactly. GP is not using an apt comparison. For many people, the primary reason to use Firefox is privacy. They made a massive faux pas against their primary selling point and people are upset.

Would you consider switching a product if the main reason you liked a product came into question? I think any rational person would.

>That's what happened to steel production in the US.

*Some of the steel production in the US. I am certainly not making the argument that the steel industry in the US is as large or vibrant as the 70s or 80s. However, USX still does have several plants open and is doing fairly well. In my slightly knowledgeable opinion, this is because there is such a high up front cost of building a plant (especially a continuous pour caster).

The industry also made a very large shift from producing new steel to recycling scrap to produce slabs. Virgin steel is much harder to work with and produce than its recycled counterpart. This lowers the barrier to entry, increasing competition.

After this shift, I don't think there is any way that the U.S would have been able to compete with Chinese steel regardless of unions. Even if you removed all of the union CBA stuff and just left U.S compensation laws and OSHA, I highly doubt the margins are there to compete in regards to recycled steel.

I disagree with this. Labels are the main beneficiaries of music distribution[0]. In addition, the non-committal nature of streaming makes it so much easier to get people to listen to your music. There are tons of artists I love with <10,000 plays that I never would have even heard of if not for music streaming services.

Even if royalties are the biggest source of income (which I don't believe to be true), I still think streaming is beneficial to small artists. Using your math of 238 plays per CD, at 10,000 listens they would have to sell more than 50 CDs for CDs to be more profitable for them. There are an incredibly high number of artists on Spotify who have 10k plays on a single song who probably couldn't have given their CDs away.

I've gone to shows to see the opening acts and co-headliners because of streaming services. I've bought merch from plenty of small artists that I never would have even known existed. I've listened to genres I had no interest in and found artists I like and support because of streaming services.

I feel like the exposure and the ability to produce your music (and actually have people be able to find and listen to it) massively outweighs any potential loss of revenue. There are potentially some medium sized artists who would have done better in the CD model, but probably not with how prevalent music piracy was in the 2000s.

[0]https://splinternews.com/buying-an-album-isnt-the-best-way-t...

I resonate with this so much. I honestly feel incredibly lucky to end up where I did. My sophomore year of high school, I took a programming class almost entirely on accident.

I took a business class with a teacher my freshman year and really liked her. The only other elective she taught was an intro to C++ course. It's like a light switch went off in my head that this is what I am supposed to do with my life.

I had my sophomore and junior year to do projects and really solidify that this is the thing for me. I had plenty of help a long the way. I had a few particularly great professors and a life-changing internship at a startup. I feel so lucky to have these experiences that are almost random chance that things worked out for me.

I can't imagine what it's like to try to decide what you want to do for the rest of your life with only a high school classes and possibly a part-time job. How can you decide you want to do something with such a narrow and outsider perspective? I had much more exposure than most to what I wanted to do and it still took a lot of luck and wrong turns to get here. I can't imagine how hard it must be with even more limited exposure.

This is good PR for them now. "Look we are clearly not at fault and will vehemently defend our innocence." In addition this claim is absolutely non-binding.

Also, if the trial lawyer in question is just trying to make a quick buck, this is a deterrent. If the goal is just a cash grab, why would this lawyer go through an arduous legal battle for a false claim when there are plenty of other lucrative cases that will settle out of court.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I can't see any downside to saying this. There is zero obligation to follow through. The outcome of this case is going to be a big story regardless of this statement. It's just solid PR and posturing with little to no cost to do so.

GPUs are quite good at doing arithmetic in parallel. A large part of machine learning is doing arithmetic on large data sets. It makes sense to do these operations in parallel. For example, implementing k-nearest neighbors on a GPU is almost 2 orders of magnitude faster than on a CPU[0].

GPUs just work very well when you have a a lot of data and you are able to run the operations on the data set in parallel. Machine learning seems to fit this model quite well which is why you see many GPUs used in this field. Other things that take advantage of parallelism would be graphics and crypto-currency mining.

[0] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.159...

Doctors, police officers, and teachers are individuals hired to do a particular job. They have responsibilities at those jobs. If they cannot or do not want to do them, they are free to quit, switch careers, or face the consequences of their actions. Outside of that job, they are free to associate or not associate with anyone they choose.

A grocery store is a private entity. Outside of banning someone for being a protected class, they are free to refuse service to anyone. Even if someone is a protected class, they still can be banned for valid reasons (i:e; stealing, threats, etc). Being a racist is not a protected class. Nor should it be. The grocery store has the right not to do business with them.

Facebook and Google are private entities. They can refuse service for any reason (with some restrictions). They have no ethical obligation to give service to everyone. No one has any obligation to use Facebook or Google's services either.

TL;DR: Outside of a few legal requirements, no one has any obligations to associate with anyone.

To add to this, there is literally a term "the Pittsburgh Left"[1]. Informal etiquette does really help prevent things like a lane getting blocked for three lights when someone needs to make a left at a busy intersection. However, humans definitely aren't perfect and they likely add a lot of congestion on their own from stuff like following to closely, not maintaining speed, etc.

I feel like this is going to be a huge problem if we have mixed human operated and self-driving vehicles on the road at the same time. If we ever move to entirely self driving cars we could move to some sort of protocol for cars to communicate about ambiguous self driving actions.

It's really common to see the Uber Volvo's driving around, but it definitely causes me to tense up when driving around them. I have no idea why, I realize there is significant risk when around any other car on the road. It's new. Hopefully these issues get worked out in a reasonable time frame, but it is software.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_left

I 100% do not mean to point this at you in particular. I do not know your situation. But, in a general sense, a lot of the reason for the pressure is because these thing take time. There is no magic cure.

Going to a mental health professional requires time to see results. It also requires being with the right person. Medication won't instantly make you feel better (for longer than the short term), it requires the correct dosage, correct type, etc. The "working out, eating right, plenty of sleep" method may show results but it also takes a lot of time and persistence to see those results.

I am not saying that any of these solutions will work for everyone. I am just saying that any of these solutions takes trial and error. Some people go see a therapist once, don't make a connection, and declare that it doesn't work for them. It will take time. It is a process. Again, everyone is different and need to find what works for them, but whatever it is, they need to stick with it. I know it can be overbearing, but it comes from a place of compassion and concern. No one who cares about you wants to see you depressed. How would you prefer that they approach it?

This article is from last year, but at the time Chrome had approximately 60% and Firefox at approximately 15% of the market[0]. It's not like people don't know that other browsers exist. Even non-technically savvy people know about Chrome. I'm sure a lot of that share comes from Android, but a large number of people go out of their way to install it on their desktops.

Sure,there are some people who will never consider installing another browser, but do you honestly believe that those people will go out of their way to install Edge on their phone over Android or Safari which are installed by default? I will concede that the app store does make it easier for someone to install a third party browsers, but how many of those people are going to know that Edge for mobile exist or go out of their way to install it?

If they are happy enough with Edge because it is the default on Windows, they'll most likely be happy enough with Chrome or Safari on their mobile. Yes, people who elect to use Edge because they like it and not because it is the default may choose to use it on mobile, but I can't imagine that number is very high.

I do not have data to prove this, but do you honestly believe that the number of people who can name a File Explorer alternative is anywhere close to the number of people that can name multiple web browsers? I find that incredibly hard to believe and a poor comparison.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/firef...

Paid time off

That's exactly what an internet shill would want you to think ;)

+1 for this. Try before you "buy" so to speak. In a very similar vein, Linux Mint also allows you to do this. Both OSes work very well out of the box and there are large communities for help.

I subscribe to the Chicago school way of thinking way more than Marx or Keynesian economics, but I totally disagree. Everything about economics can be wrong. You can't control for every variable in a market. It just isn't possible. Even economic "laws" like supply and demand have counter examples like Giffen goods.

Counter examples only show that something does not work in all cases. It isn't a proof that something doesn't work in any case. Supply and demand is going to hold true in the vast majority of cases despite the existence of counter examples. In a similar vein, you can't say that an economic model is invalid in all cases because there are counter examples.

There are a ton of external factors that lead to the success or failure of a market. Culture, politics, resources, and industrialization play a huge role in shaping the market. These things are ever changing. Argue against the model, not its success or failure.

Did you really expect them to fund you with just an idea and some domain knowledge? Not to sound rude, but that's pretty naive. How many people are out there who have a "million dollar idea" who just need someone to build it? The answer is a ton and a boatload of them apply to YC every year. Good ideas are abundant. Proof of concepts and prototypes are not.

Getting into YC does not mean that Modular Science is going to be a success. They still need a good tech team, people with domain knowledge, and a market to sell to. Your farming knowledge is definitely important to a project like this, but there is a much greater supply of it. It wouldn't be that hard to hire a couple farmers to be subject matter experts. It is and continues to be insanely hard to put together a team that can build autonomous robots.

Don't give up on your dream, but you need to realize that a farming robot is technology. That's what you're selling. You need people who can build the technology. Find them and build the company. Make a prototype. Use your domain knowledge to make it better than the competition's product. Don't just be a guy with an idea, be a guy who builds things.

This is absolutely correct. Proving P=NP doesn't magically create the algorithm, it just proves that there is one.

However, the reason why I chose to single out crypto specifically is because it has the most to lose if that algorithm exists. Our current methods of encryption become unsafe regardless of whether the algorithm is known or not. I don't think you can claim that your encryption is secure if there is an algorithm that can crack it in polynomial time, regardless of whether the algorithm is known or not.

The most interesting thing is if P=NP. If that's the case, that means that there is an algorithm that can solve any NP problem in polynomial time. This means that things like crypto would be able to be cracked in polynomial time which presents a huge problem for security.

We basically operate under the assumption that P!=NP currently. Validation that this is true doesn't really change much. I can't speak to how this may help a academic researcher in CompSci, but it probably doesn't change much for most programmers.