skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
NYT isn't talking about revenue, it's talking about income. Again; very. different. things. And they do it so they are comparing apples to apples.

Sure, it's not a full picture and I agree with you that wealth would be much more complete but it is also orders of magnitude harder to compare.

Despite the gap in lifestyle being smaller than at any point in history, history is a dismal stick to measure by. Smaller doesn't mean small. Not being able to afford daily common medicine is not a small problem. Having little choice but to get a loan at 1300% to 3000% per year interest in order to fix your car to get to work or lose your job is not a small problem. Having to work every waking hour to afford food and shelter for your kids or they go hungry is not a small problem.

We've made progress and that's great but I personally don't think that we've made it until people have the freedom to choose for themselves and that includes the freedom to correct their past missteps. If a person chooses to have a kid at 15, for example, chances are that dictates a life path (a series of severely limited choices) that is devastating in terms of what they can provide for themselves, their children, and society. It is a waste.

As long as resources are needlessly wasted because a class of people's decisions are weighed down with desperation and the specter of immediate physical suffering for themselves or their loved ones then there is too big of a gap.

I have nothing against disparity and everything against desperation.

We are close. I think it is possible (perhaps for the first time in history) to solve desperation, at least in the US. It is frustrating that the tide of opinion seems to be shifting away from that goal. I think if we reach that level and eliminate desperation we will see some remarkable things happen in the market. When 50 million people are trading for gain rather than to tread water or worse, we will see an explosion of value creation. Will some people end up with more than others? Of course! Largely, I hope, according to their ability and willingness to do something useful with those resources. But until we eliminate desperation we will never know and we will always be trying to balance the desperate classes losses against everyone else's gain.
Its called POLA in the FreeBSD world. Principle of least astonishment. So this exists outside solaris too. :)
I can't tell if thats a joke or if you're serious :)
Please use Google. You can pick your own sources rather than rely on mine, but here:

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/texas-companies-tie-wor...
Am I confused or is it not the case that the whole argument for Electron is "write once in Javascript, have a native app for all platforms"? If this is what a flagship Electron app has to do to be performant, is there a real future in Electron?
Yes - that's what I'm currently working on.
Try doolio beta – show your skills and be inspired by others
1.) It's not so simple. There are social mechanisms at play that will lead to a segregated workforce if we do not combat them. In today's world it takes effort to maintain a diverse workforce. As as to whether its a good thing, I think that a) diversity of people means diversity of ideas and solutions, and b) diversity in workers helps combat some of the social mechanisms that would keep the workforce segregated. It is also of the uptmost importance to note that raising diversity in the workforce is orthogonal to compromising on the quality of workers.

2.) Yonatan Zunger's response to the manifesto has been highly shared, but I think his essay "Tolerance is not a moral precept" is an important framework when talking about this issue. The basic premise is that by adopting tolerance as a social norm, we are not agreeing to also tolerate intolerance. Companies like Google have set out the edict that all their workers should be treated with respect. By questioning the inate abilities of a large portion of the workforce, the manifesto's author is doing great damage to the attitude of tolerance that allows Google to operate. He isn't be prosecuted by the government, but he is necessarily being expunged from an enviromenent that he is incompatible with.
Here is an "intellectual debate" for you: hairdressers are a danger to society and should be exterminated. Why don't you want to have it? Why censoring a potentially valid viewpoint?
That's a mischaracterization of his argument. Essentially the author argues that right or wrong the manifesto is especially polarizing and the engineer has essentially made it very difficult for him to work with anyone else at Google moving forward. Zunger in no way states that he condones, or suggests the action of punching the manifesto guy in the face, he just outlines it as a possible reaction, of releasing a company wide manifesto, which could uncharitably be interpreted to call into question the merits of female and other minority engineers.
Ask HN: Have you shut down a company before?
Has anyone taken money from investors (small seed rounds to institutional VCs) and decided to shut down? Is it ever possible to keep the business operating or does the entire site have to shut down? What was the process like for considering shutting down and ultimately doing so?
Biological imperfection? Genetic defect? Bit harsh, no?

You've painted love in this way, and it may be true for the majority of us. OK. But there will always be exceptions in a million other forms.

I know ugly people who are utterly charming, either sweet or swaggery and others fall for them all the time.

I also know beautiful people who are foul-mannered, and their relationships never last.

And then all the others in between these two extremes. The good-looking one who had stinky pits like the rest of us after an all-nighter. The average-looking one with a wicked sense of humour, only after 3 conversations though. The dummy-looking one who actually has a strength so niche it's effing admirable. The chatterbox, the joker, the quietly brilliant ... on and on it goes. Oh and let's not forget the time factor; personalities change, experience builds up et cetra.

See, that's how you get over this "biological defect." First impressions may be Tinder-like, but we (life?) are so much more sophisticated than that.

No idea what social individualism is but the way I see is this: Nurture yourself to be the person you think you are, and open yourself to interactions. Invest in the relationships once you get them. Be empathical, even if you 'lose'. If everyone does this, we're on track to a happier, more loving society.
Sounds like you're assuming level 4 merely means parity or better with human error. Lots of problems with that. For instance if it's Google's negligent bug that kills the family of 4 instead of a driver, Google gets sued. Google has much deeper pockets than the driver who would typically declare bankruptcy, effectively capping the damages. No real cap for Google, every time. So that explodes the cost of autonomous vehicles. And then there's the matter of potential criminal liability in the case of gross negligence. So there's going to be a much higher bar for transitioning to level 4.

Also, while there may be fewer of some types of accidents, there will be lawsuits for a potentially very large set of other types that never used to get litigated. For example today when a driver causes their own accident, nobody gets sued.
The problem here is the people assuming "diversity" means actual diversity.

Just like "inclusiveness" or "safe space". They do not mean what most people unaware of the political use of these expressions mean. These expressions are politically loaded.

The confusion is orchestrated, on purpose, by the ideologues who redefined these words. Who can say he is against diversity? inclusiveness? safe-spaces, off course people want to be safe! these are positive words. Until you actually understand that a safe space isn't a physical safe space but a ideological safe space, where dissidence is prohibited.

For the "ignorant", they mean one thing, for the ideologues, they have a complete different meaning.

I too was completely fooled by the post-modernist double speak and engaged in the attack of the people who were against these "concepts", I too engaged in witch-hunts, before I truly understood how these words were politically loaded and didn't mean what I thought they meant. It is extremely subtle and cunning. Redefinition of words is an extremely effective and manipulative weapon.

People say, well, keep politics out of work and you'll be fine. But if the internal rules at work use expressions such as diversity, inclusiveness or safe-space, these are politically loaded at first place! your work environment IS adopting the intersectional ideological framework.
The rise of prepaid cards in America
Some people seem to have an unhealthy bias against colorful language when it is used in service of a larger point. But they seem all too happy to use it as a distraction from engaging with the points raised.
He didn't say it very well, but I think he was getting at the Occams' Razor argument - this seems like an unnecessarily complex set of theories to explain the observed phenomena. (Not that I agree, but I think you missed his point)
This proves a point that suppressing dissent helps grow divides we all know exist, without helping fix it.
My time at Google many years ago led me to the conclusion that they are completely full of it. Many employees are repulsive, off-putting, and enjoy treating others like nothing. They also couldn't care less about diversity.

Based on their diversity report, only ~200 (of ~20,000) software engineers are black, which is still likely an exaggeration, as I bet many are software engineers in test.
It’s worth noting that the author has a Ph.D. in systems biology from Harvard University.

This footnote is incorrect according to Harvard he never completed a PhD.
Thank you for great starting points. I think my biggest hurdle was that I didn't feel like I had a good handle on how to discern the mainstream from the quacks. I appreciate your concise overview :)

> I think the best way to start an education in a particular field is with a textbook.

Excellent suggestion.
Don't worry east Asia has the diversification of colonialism in good hands.
I'm not following.

I will gladly debate this with you. Don't assume I don't want to engage, or that I would attempt to censor your view.
I don't see many references. I just see a lot of stereotyping with no citations at all. Eg:

> Women, on average, have more:

> ● Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally
also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also
interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing)

> ● Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher
agreeableness.

> ● Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).

A bit further down:

> Men’s higher drive for status

> We always ask why we don't see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life.

Holy crap!

- Edit below this line -

This is not expressing a different opinion based on facts, but pure stereotyping.

As a person who appreciates logic in arguments, I wouldn't like to work or have an argument with someone who presents his views of the world as axioms without data to support them.
If I were to tell multiple co-workers to their face that they are inferior to me, I would be fired. This guy told a very large amount of his co-workers that they're inferior to him, and he posted it all over the Internet for everyone to see.

You'd be hard pressed to find a company where leveling personal attacks against your co-workers isn't a fireable offense.

Freedom of speech isn't the same thing as freedom from the consequences of his actions. All it means is you can't be jailed or executed for it. You are not entitled to have people continue to have you in their lives.

Furthermore, his employer has a right to freedom of association, and they have chosen to exercise that right by ceasing to associate with him.

If this is authoritarian, than I will proudly call myself an authoritarian. Perhaps Hobbes was right after all.
Ask HN: You have $100/mo to invest in cryptocurrency, BTC, BTC Cash or Ether?
I have some expendable income every month and I'd like to have a stake in cryptocurrency. I find it interesting but my attention span is short, so having some funds involved would make it more interesting, and it's money I can afford to lose.

Obviously they're all a gamble, but I'm interested to hear which one people would pick. Bitcoin cash seems a bit unsteady with it being new, Bitcoin appears to be stronger than ever (when I thought the fork would lower its value) and Ethereum is backed by some fairly big names and recovering from its dip.

On a sidenote, if anyone has a platform to recommend feel free, as all I've been recommended is markets.com.
I haven't finished this because it is very long, but it is good. Do you believe in the paradox of tolerance?

http://tim.dreamwidth.org/2035407.html
So the media are manipulating content of the document in order to provoke their readers. This is outrageous, I feel sorry for the guy. Freedom of speech is threatened by obssesive political correctness that silences unpopular points of view.
"Feel he should have been fired" and "Wouldn't throw a fit if he was fired" are different things.

Do I think this guy should have been fired? I dunno. Not sure. I need more context.

Am I upset he was fired? No. That's Google's choice, regardless of how good a choice it is or isn't.
But the linked bluebird docs says:

As an optimization, the cancellation signal propagates
upwards the promise chain so that an ongoing operation e.g.
network request can be aborted.
I hope that company or those companies are truly African and not some neocolonial abomination essentially owned by foreign investment.

The excitement of Africa is the chance at something new - why not something local, sustainable, and not prey to the walled gardens and greed of the West? The idea of something uniquely African is far more exciting than SV Tech: A Foreign Adventure.
Note that his main accomplishment was the wildly successful Google+.
You can't put a trademark name at the front of a product name is what I have been told unless you get permission from the trademark holder. Not sure if this is true I also would love to know the reason.
It's funny that I read past this line without even thinking about how unusual it is that it needs a source. I've read so many blogposts and tweets about how it's justifiable to punch people in the face over specific disagreements that I'm completely desensitized to the hilarious image of grown, educated adults lashing out just because they're losing an argument.

It seems like every time I make a politically controversial post on Reddit and increasingly HN, I can just CTRL-F my comment inbox and assure myself that there's some reference to punching in there.
I find it funny he was fired by "promoting gender stereotypes" when what he wants it to evaluate each individual without taking account any stereotype. And then Google has policies for increasing the minority diversity (like helping women to get in tech). Just the fact you have programs target for specific demographics supports the fact that there are "gender stereotypes". Not to mention all the analytics tools that split the population by gender.

I would find more helpful if companies have programs to increase the tolerance and respect inside the company. Because the problem of sexims or racism are not the women or the black people, the problem is the people with prejudices. Adding to the company people of minorities is useless if the internal culture is a shit. At some point they will leave the company. I think Google made a step in the wrong direction and promote a worse culture with this action. People now will not talk about issues afraid of getting fired, even when they do it with respect.
> I don't understand the attempts at shutting down conversation about it

To try to shed a little light on this phenomenon, the "it" you refer to expands to "why women and minorities may be biologically less qualified for this job, and those that are here as our teammates are illegitimate in some way."

Using the expansion in your paragraph:

=====

I don't understand the attempts at shutting down conversation about why women and minorities may be biologically less qualified for this job, and those that are here as our teammates are illegitimate in some way. If you think he's wrong, you share your opinion and persuade others. You don't shut down the conversation and pretend that women and minorities are biologically as qualified for this job, or that their hires are as legitimate as anyone else's.

=====

That's what some people are hearing. Hopefully it's obvious why management at most companies would consider these discussions to be less than helpful in fostering the most productive work environment.
The media, that before completely warped what the memo is saying, now reporting differently is interesting, relevant to HN and newsworthy, and not something we saw yesterday.
>Imagine how surreal this must be for Damore.

I'm not 100% convinced that he didn't expect this. Some of the points he raised are valid and people should be able to agree to disagree. But the points about biological differences being responsible for women not being interested in STEM are controversial. I don't think Science is there on that - so raising them in this kind of a manifesto is inflammatory.
Thanks for the suggestion. I tend to run everything on Futures, rarely dealing with callbacks or promises, so interop tends to be a non-issue. But it's probably worth including a promise-to-future convertion function.

What do you think is worth adding or writing about?
> What this whole episode really seems to show is how authoritarianism has crept into our lives and how incredibly difficult it is to resist it even amongst highly educated people.

How is this any different than if I was to exercise my "free speech" to insult my CEO and found myself fired? This was a private corporation, operating in an at-will employment state. Now if the government had taken steps to censor speech, one could argue that we're in an authoritarian regime. But workplaces have always (at least since I've been working), been places where we voluntarily subject ourselves to private authority, or else quit or are fired.
Just what everyone needs, another monthly subscription to watch what they previously could already watch.
> yes, but the gap in lifestyle is small is my point. Smaller than any point in history.

What point in history are you benchmarking against? If you are comparing the current moment to pre and early-Industrial periods, then yes the gap is smaller. That's hardly a standard by which to judge the moment though.

If, however, you are comparing it to the lifestyle gap of a generation ago, there has been a clear increase in the gap. Key goods that are the bedrock of a high quality of life: healthcare, education, decent housing - have become far less accessible to the working class and poor than they were in the recent past. No quantity or variety of cheap electronics and entertainment can make up for the loss of a huge number of people's ability to purchase those goods.
Those references are actually the opposite of helpful to his case. And, in fact, as a biologist he ought to know better than to apply the generalizations he refers to to specific populations or individuals.
That is the brave new world awaiting us all. As machines get more capable, the economic role of humans diminish. This is analagous to the fate of horses after the introduction of the internal combustion engine.

Most everyone on this site has the education and skills to stay ahead of the AI revolution for some time. But many other people already have fallen behind. If the only things you know how to do can be done by machines at less cost than a living wage, then what hope do you have to compete?
I don't think anyone is questioning that; I believe the OP's question was more along the lines of "what wasteful resource management strategies on behalf of Atom's developers lead to the product consuming so much space and running so slow?"
I'm not sure I understand your point so please correct me if I misunderstand, but the person wasn't fired for having a different opinion.

He was fired for saying things which were deeply hurtful for a large number of employees.
For a clear-cut example:

Is calling my co-workers who are people of colour racial slurs a thought crime? Should I be fired for that, or should my employer tolerate it? Should I be allowed to make remarks about how evolutionary psychology tells me that women should be in the kitchen? Or that African Americans are predisposed to crime?

At what point does saying things stops becoming thought crime, and starts becoming 'creating a hostile work environment'? There has to be a point of crossover, somewhere, right?

If you said yes, you're an authoritarian stifling discourse. If you said no, then... Well, that's certainly a principled stance you can take.
That's kind of the point though.

Google is one of, if not the, biggest player in terms of information served over the internet. If they are willing to censor at this level, how far will they go to protect their public image and suppress discussion they don't agree with?
I think diversity is not exactly an end in and on itself, but a way to reduce general inequality. Increasing the number of woman in fishing, or logging, or coal mining is not going to have as much effect on the general economic/social power of women as doing the same on bigger, richer industries such as programming. As resources are limited, you want to be as efficient as possible and that will probably shift the focus away from industries that are not that influential. Of course the fact that they're not as attractive is also relevant, but it seems that being non-attractive and being less important are correlated features in an industry sector.
That matches what I've heard, but we don't know what his behavior was like in the office. I think GP's point is that this may have just been (one hell of a) final straw.
Nailed it! Thank you.
It depends on the amount of bureaucracy (bureaucracy fosters working with locals who can navigate the system) as well as the trade barriers they might face. Not just vis a vis extra African countries but within Africa you can face lots of trade barriers.
Here is a link to the guy's original memo (with all his references that have been removed from much popular media coverage of its content): https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...

You should read it before you draw any conclusions. Although I don't necessarily agree with everything he says (and how he says it), he does make some interesting points in a way that I would hope can promote constructive discussion. I definitely don't think he should have been fired just for the memo - maybe there is more to the story? - or maybe he shouldn't have been fired?
There were several people gloating over the idea that he had ruined his career, several people insinuating that violence against him would be acceptable, several people claiming that he would never work in the valley again, and several people (some self-identified managers) proudly stating that they had personal blacklists for whoever agreed with him.
I don't think he should've been fired, no. But I also feel the NFL or team owners are within their rights as private citizens to not hire him. Does that make them racist? Sure. But being bigoted and supporting racist social policies in and of itself isn't inherently illegal.
> largely uneducated

To be fair, according to Wikipedia, "Education in North Korea is universal and state-funded schooling by the government. The national literacy rate for citizens at age of 15 and older is 100 percent (approx.)."

> believes in all Kim's propaganda

How do you know?
Rude...
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