skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
'"How do you know what not to believe in?" is my first question, and usually that shuts them down. '

It usually goes something like this:

T; Do you believe in god?

A: Define 'god'

T: <some description involving unverifiable supernatural beings>

A: No. I do not believe that.

No one gets shut down.

"They haven't grown to understand where the definitional fault lines are."

Nice ad hominem there. Talk about lazy.
it is acceptable to be a UU and believe in God or not believe in God. That is why some people think UU is not a religion- it doesn't have dogma.
Right. And to help you not to make similar mistakes in the future: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model.
The thing is, if god exists, all is hopeless, because everything is arbitrary (at the whim of said god). Only without a god is there any hope for us humans to make sense of things.

I think in a way the existence of god would be very depressing, because it would make everything meaningless.
Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can't Index
Wow, I don't think I've ever been so offended by something on this site. Your implication that I haven't thought about the future of my daughter is... something I hope you never say to any other parent.

We've done our best to think about the future, but it's unknowable.
10^-20000 improbabilities

So, not very many improbabilities to worry about then?
I assume he also drives a model T, writes with a fountain pen, and uses a cell phone from 1995 as well?

Seriously, though, the advances from Windows 95 to Vista are less about improving the "tool" and more about improving the experience of using the computer. I don't think you can really call a computer a "tool" anymore, anyway. It is the communication, entertainment, and productivity center of many people's lives. It serves far more value than a hammer or a pen. It has the ability to morph into practically anything. Back in 1995, when the real value of a computer was still somewhat ambiguous, people called them tools because that was the closest metaphor to a a familiar paradigm. Today, the computer is the paradigm.

The argument this guy uses is kind of stupid and reminds me of the short-sighted, extremely stubborn attitude of the most geeky people I know. He doesn't like Internet Explorer 4, so he refuses to use an operating system based on IE. While IE 4 was a terrible internet browser, it served Windows pretty well; using the idea of back and forward buttons for browsing files/folders is still used today in Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Sure, Windows 98 sucked at it, but that's exactly what Windows XP improved on. (Arguably, Windows Vista improved on this as well.) That's why people upgraded.

In the end, by using Windows 95, he is just torturing himself. He might gain pleasure from the novelty of writing stories like this one and getting strange reactions from people, but in the end, his experience of using his computer is just... terrible.
They (and similar companies) should read http://www.whatisleft.org/lookie_here/2008/02/big-company-s-... (and similar) and learn?
No, it's worse than that. I think we know well enough that we're agnostic. It's just that agnostics have even worse PR than atheists.

Look at the digg survey this article links to: there's no option for "agnostic". Did the agnostics choose "atheist" or "other"? Either way, they're hidden.

Look at the photo spread: it lists "Famous Agnostics/Atheists", as if they're the same thing, but at least half are arguably agnostic:

- Darwin: self-described agnostic; claimed he had "never been an athiest"

- Einstein: "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic."

- Edison: apparently a lifelong agnostic

- Gates: can't find a clear statement, but said in an interview "I don't know if there's a god or not"

Look at the article itself: there's no mention of agnosticism at all. They're simply using a photo of a famous agnostic to bolster an argument about atheism.

I believe that a lot of us who are (and rightfully claim to be) agnostic are being labeled "atheist" by people who don't know or care.
Assuming he is using it, how exactly is he running Firefox 3 (he has an entry about it's release on his blog) on Win95? I haven't tried it but the OS isn't showing a message and then denies the possibility to install FF3? And what kind of productivity do you get with, let's say, 6 or 7 year's old software? I wonder, really, what kind of development/usage is he attributing to that machine.
Religious faith for me simply means a faith that I can better the life I'm living and make a positive impact on this world and its people.

I think most atheists feel something like this as well (we may not choose to call it "faith"). If this is all that "religious faith" means to you, then I would argue you're not particularly religious. Of course religion can be defined in various ways, but to call a belief system "religion" that has no concept of an omniscient, omnipotent Creator who has any sort of direct influence on peoples' lives so dilutes the meaning of that word that you're left with a tautology -- religion means whatever you feel about things that can't be explained by science.
I had that idea years ago
Keep weakening (or twisting) the definition until the answer to that question is "Yes"? Is there a rationale for doing this?
We don't deserve an award for not killing each other because of differences in opinion. Or we might as well hand out "Not a racist" awards to everybody. Civility is something we should demand from everybody - not something to be pleasantly surprised by.
Every time a new (microsoft) OS is realeased, you find tons of people who say that it isn't any better and there's no need to upgrade. Then a few years later everyone says, "you're still using previous_version?". (Vista actually seems like it may be the exception...)

It seems to me that this is an extreme case of the above situation. This guy has something that works for him. I would say works well, but until you've used something for a while and understand how it enhances your productivity, you really don't see the error of your old ways.

Some are asking why he doesn't install Linux. My thought is that if one of your decisions when choosing an OS is maintaining compatibility with your DOS games, you're probably not an ideal candidate for linux. Note that it doesn't matter if you Can play DOS games on linux; it's just a completely different mindset.
If they were simply reducing the subsidy equally for everyone, the reaction wouldn't be quite the same.

Instead, they seem to be making the subsidy -- which includes the unique benefit of having children nearby onsite -- conditional on a high level of copayment. Only if you can already afford gold-plated child-care, then you get the additional Google subsidy and proximity. If the copayment is too dear, you wind up getting no subsidy, and your children wind up farther away.

It's like welfare for the already-well-off, which excludes the most needy.
His tone was harsh, but I don't think that indignation is a fair response to the question. Did something change in your lives that made this problem unpredictable? Were one of you planning on staying home with the children, only to have finances shift such that you both have to work?

Obviously, you don't have to answer him in detail, but you could do more than simply scold the guy for asking. I know plenty of couples who never thought deeply about finances before they launched into parenthood.
Okay, usually I just disagree when folks say there's a certain degree of arrogance in 37Signals bloggings somemtimes, but I've got to comment that it's certainly evident here.

I certainly see the point David is trying to make in this writing about the competitiveness of the startup scene, and it certainly makes sense to know what's going on out there before you jump in head first you're going to get burned.

But good lord, if you pride yourselves on building quality products, have a quality blog behind it that doesn't punch readers in the face like that.
I don't think he meant to be so offensive. He may just not realize how hard this problem is.

The fact is, finding a perfect solution for taking care of small children in an industrial society is probably an insoluble problem. And if so it's not one you can solve before having kids, or after them.
In a hypothetical universe, if kids weren't exposed to ANY thoughts about religion AT ALL and were taught about what we know about how the universe works, would the concept of God arise? Perhaps, since there are still a lot of things which are mysterious and can't be explained. But it seems that it will take a very different form than what we have been exposed to.
Given the Google preferred-voting structure, shareholders should know they're going to be subject to a lot of the owner-manager's whims in trying new projects and markets. Like their for-profit philanthropy subsidiary, Google.org. Or even in-sourced daycare project itself, rather than contracting it out to established providers.
Or I could just assume that all objects fall upwards is an axiom and then try to reason my way around to explain gravity!
Even atheists don't -know- whether there's a god or not. So the statement Gates made sounds like the statement from a politically correct atheist. Einstein also considered the idea of a personal god very implausible.

I think an agnostic is somebody who doesn't know whether god exists, but considers it a 50/50 situation. Both sides are equally plausible. A fence-sitter, if you will. An atheist thinks extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and that the evidence for god doesn't stack up. Therefore atheists are forced to conclude there probably is no god. Or simply said: there is no god. Even though we all admit we may be wrong.
Google’s subsidized child day care not as good as it used to be?
Nice.

Some thoughts:

* Allow the creation of slide shows without signing/up, as 280slides allows.
* If a page requires JavaScript to work, have a notice on the page for people like me who surf with NoScript on to tell them to turn on scripting.
I wonder if anyone else has caught the contradiction in the article-

"This makes them the single largest religious group on Digg,..." (The author acknowledges that atheism is a 'religious group')

"Religion has no place in science." (Used as a possible reason why Geeks tend to be atheists)

Religion is the greatest science of all. All other branches of science are merely an appendage to true religion. When we understand nature, and natures God (or the rules that govern nature) we understand science.
Argh, fixed, thanks.
Check the date of the article. It is almost 3 years old!
"As a neuroscientist, I know that finite matter gives rise to visions of the infinite."

I'm pretty sure this doesn't mean anything.
Exactly! The "evil" part about this isn't that Google wants to reduce their subsidy from 37k to 12k it's that Google wants to reduce the subsidy w/o lowering costs.

That said no one is forcing the parents to use Google child care and they could presumably band together and go to the company that ran the original lower cost care service and have them open a cost effective center near by, or something to that effect.
Parents who had been paying $1,425 a month for infant care would see their costs rise to nearly $2,500

"$1,425" was the subsidized price? If someone told me day care cost that much, I'd fall on the floor, but that's the good price. A woman where I work pays 30 dollars a day, and that's far, far too much. Unbelievable waste. Absolutely unbelievable. $1,425 is more than my total monthly expenses. I could theoretically make my living by watching one child. Clearly, this is an industry just waiting for its Sam Walton.
cough priceadvance.com cough
and if you don't think they're tolerant enough, there's always http://www.themonastery.org/
40k seems excessive. say you paid the teacher very well they would get what like 100k a year? So you are saying that 1 teacher can only watch 3 kids? There are entire families with more kids than that.
There are still people who swear to a fountain pen. Not all old tech is useless.
:) Interesting how many comments I get (both public and private) on this topic.
I'm guessing you don't have children.

Children being alone at home vs. being with lots of other children in daycare has many benefits.

First, over the years I've seen a lot of kids that stayed at home with mom that were not socialized well at all. Being in a group is how we evolved. It's natural and normal. Being at home with one parent all day is not normal at all.

Aside from socialization, being in the "home bubble" doesn't do a child's immune system any good. They need to be exposed to lots of stuff early in childhood to develop a strong immune system.
Side- (or off-) topic

"@mooders"

Does adding a leading @ character to a user name add anything?

Please consider: no Twitter Litter(tm).

:)
Then it's your job as a regular to flag those posts and state the reason why you flagged it.
It will be funny when doctors and lawyers are outsourced. Programming was outsourced not because it is an easy profession but because it was the entire profession that enabled outsourcing, and so was looked onto as magical by people who had never seen computers or had as good a way to make a living before.

But there's really no reason why outsourcing will be limited to manufacturing and IT, especially as the kids of the 3rd world IT specialists grow up and choose new professions for themselves. You really only need surgeons, dentists, nurses, and pill dispensing machines on shore. American law books and internal medicine facts can be studied very well off-shore, and trials and meetings can be held via online video. Everything would be digital and operate even faster than ever before. Nurses would have two main specialties, consisting of taking care of the old and taking a patient's vitals for off-shore doctors and computers that are good at predicting events and prescribing solutions, to calculate.

This would also reduce the costs of healthcare for everybody. ;)
He wasn't really asking it was a rhetorical question and he was the one "scolding". I don't think he is "entitled" to an answer and think "davidw" was extremely polite in response to the tone of the previous comment.
Because X is client-server based, it actually performs much worse than Windows 95. That might be one of the issues he would have with using Linux. It's very high performance as a server platform, but it does a little worse as a consumer OS.
"this thread shows why I'm so impressed with the YC community"

I was actually thinking the opposite. I come here for news and articles relating to technology start ups, and this thread shows how far off track hacker news has gotten.
I love fountain pens. The idea is that a ball point pen is far more practical for every day use.
Pre-Firefox Mozilla (what became Seamonkey) could be made to work on Windows 95... I was unfortunately forced to do so one time. You had to download a couple extra drivers and install some updates from Microsoft, but it worked.
The problem isn't with Nielsen's recommendations, it is his methods. He presents his findings as being based on scientific research, but unfortunately his methods are deceitful.

Have you ever seen the infomercial for "Dual Action Cleanse" with Klee Irwin? Irwin and Nielsen use very similar methods. The make claims that pass the common sense test, then they use something resembling science to "prove" that they are spouting fact. They are both trying to sell you something, Nielsen has just found a much more profitable customer.

I imagine selling super-laxatives to homebodies and the sleep deprived isn't anywhere as lucrative to selling consulting services to businessmen.

The problem with Nielsen is his "research" is dangerous to the field of HCI and usability. Anybody that uses his "findings" to support their own research is building a house on a broken foundation.

For his business clients this "academic navel gazing" doesn't matter, they probably see the results they were looking for (since he already told them exactly what to look for). Irwin's customers probably get the results they were after too, and whether or not the FDA monitors the claims made by "herbal supplements" probably doesn't bother them much either.
Microsoft isn't the government, though.
Consider any school. They have teachers, sure. And they have caterers, and cleaners, and contractors to maintain the infrastructure... There are a lot more people involved than just the direct service providers.
He didn't say he used Win95 exclusively, he just said he used it for his main box.
Your quote says young people have an easier time learning something new, so its actually the opposite of what the other person said.
Sisence - An Analytics Dashboard for Amazon S3
lisper, I hope you must be 21 or something. Maybe when you have kids, you will understand the difficulty of raising them, while trying to have some kind of career.

There are a lot of difficulties when raising kids, and both parents are well educated, and can have potential good careers.
I don't have kids, but my sister has, and she decided to stay for half a year home, then they got a nanny. She had to find a job that had flexible hours, so she could be home early enough, and she works hard. She has a masters in finance, and an MBA, and she decided to get a job that pays less, but that has better hours, and a lot of her salary goes to the nanny.

Before having kids, their planning was different, that they were going to send the kids in day-care, but the local options were not that good at all, and my niece was getting sick very frequently, so they had to change the plans, and for a month or so they were in a dilema on what to do.

Your comment had a very arrogant tone, and it came out preachy and self righteous. Maybe you didn't mean it, but that's how it came.
"Being an atheist implies some degree of faith."

As someone smarter than me once put it: "It's not that I believe in no gods, it's just that I don't believe in gods."

Christians and other believers have this most extra-ordinary theory: that there is an all-powerful creator who created everything, who sees everything, and has everything under control. They offer not one shred of proof, then muse out loud about the "faith" required not to believe in their absurd hypothesis.

I'd love to believe in gods of some kind -- it's not easy to accept the inevitability of your own annihilation -- but nobody has ever given me sufficient reason to deviate from the more sensible position of non-belief.
> I don't think he meant to be so offensive.

Looking at it again, I hope that he wrote quickly without really thinking about what his words meant.
It depends if the universe is capable of computation.
In my utopia it would be very much usual to be able to pursue a career part time/job-sharing while your children are young (or if you just prefer to be able to do other things outside your job). So each parent could work half- or three-quarters- time and thus share child care (with a moderate amount of external help), whilst still both pursuing their careers.
I must admit I often despise signing NDA's too; not because I want to steal someone's information, but because generally I've found people offer them up as a way of generating feelings of self importance (however unwarranted it may be)... and that kind of behaviour irks me.

That being said, I've often seen people who just cant shut up, NDA or not - so does it really matter?
> Obviously, you don't have to answer him in detail

I don't mind talking about my own job situation, but don't really feel comfortable talking about my wife's.

To keep it brief, my wife and I could live in any number of countries and both of us could find jobs in most of them. With choice comes a lot of thinking and a great weight of responsibility. Live in Italy, make less money, and have the grandparents nearby to help out? Live in the US, make more money at better jobs and pay someone? Stay in Austria with a nice social welfare system, and reasonable jobs? All of those have further variables and derivatives and basically end up being very much impossible to calculate a priori (and there are elements that are private and I don't wish to share publicly).

In any case, I think most parents would respond with some indignation if their commitment to their children were questioned. It's just something that's probably not very polite to do outside of a small circle of friends and family.
Erlang, or Utility-computing vs. Appliance-computing
Caterers: preparing food for ten children isn't a big job, all they need is sandwiches and drink boxes which can be prepared in advance and taken out of the fridge.

Cleaners: It's only a room, it only needs to be cleaned once a day. Shouldn't be that expensive either.

Contractors to maintain the infrastructure: again, it's only a room, maintenance really shouldn't be that difficult.

It's obvious that there's a lot of money flowing into childcare, and it's not obvious where it's all going. It's certainly not going to the people who are doing the caring -- they make almost no money at all. Is it all going to into insurance and compliance with various regulations?
An article about Windows 95, and a comment spewing FUD from the Windows 95 era. How appropriate.

Anyway, I doubt any overhead of the X protocol is visible on a modern machine. With two cores, the client and server can both run at the same time, and server operations are so fast you wouldn't notice anyway. I certainly don't notice any delay, although I do see that X has used 495 minutes of CPU time on my machine (in 9 days). (Compare that to 285 minutes of CPU time that emacs has used, and 137 that Firefox has used.)
"employer-provided day care, at affordable prices, ought to be like health insurance, a benefit that every company provides as a matter of course."

If only this were true in more companies nowadays.
Hard agnostic != atheist.
What Socrates really said about knowledge
I agree. And really, this is supposed to be how Google tackles that issue: to maintain a high-perk atmosphere.

Google's atmosphere is similar to America's regulated airline era, where fares were set by a government body. Being unable to compete on price, they competed in other dimensions -- who had the newest planes, the best food, the friendliest flying atmosphere, the most trusted brand and the best service to their customers.

The best engineers are not more motivated by a somewhat higher salary, since they are passionate about their work, right? Indeed, all the perks in the world can't keep some of their employees from heading for the exits in the, er, face of more exciting opportunities. So why offer lavish perks at all?

The always-implied reasons are for its signaling effect and ability to increase the all-important worker productivity. But I would contend that the best reason for them to do so at this point is to reduce effects of the company's relative wealth disparity, which, should they rear their heads, clearly have the potential to be very corrosive. Highly democratic perks are a tonic for a de-facto aristocracy.

But the two risks of establishing a millionaire atmosphere are clear from this example. Firstly, of course, they're way expensive to the company, and that's hard to sustain. Secondly, workers, who may not have even cared about these things before arriving, have been conditioned to expect them.

So that sets up a bind, since the company needs to maintain the illusion that these benefits create. If you try to shunt some of the expense onto your workers, say to the 20% of employees that use 80% of some benefit, you run the risk of breaking the spell. Because the antediluvian class will take it in stride while the post-IPO gleaners will scream. So, Google: buck up and pay up.