i think the main advantage that reddit has over HN is the combination of breadth and specificity. there aren't any categories or labels in HN and, as has already been discussed, people generally only see the front page. this leads to the "social echo chamber" effect that people have discussed elsewhere, meaning a lot of people read/respond to the same ideas over and over leading to an incestuous breeding ground for thought/commentary.
i prefer to create my own multireddits for content technical content i'm interested in discussing. one for languages, open source, web, mobile, or computer science theory. these would be impossible to find on HN but on reddit they often attract more serious comments (not perfect).
also, did you ask this same question on reddit? i'm wary of the implicit selection bias in asking for a comparison from HN users and not reddit. the users on HN who take the time to read and respond to something like this are more than likely to prefer HN to reddit.
one of the paragraphs that really struck me was regarding the founding fathers' awareness of the moral reprehensibility of american slavery:
> Some of the slave-owners, like Jefferson, appreciated the moral turpitude on which the economy relied. But he feared the liberation of slaves, who have “ten thousand recollections” of the crimes to which they were subjected. Fears that the victims might rise up and take revenge are deeply rooted in American culture, with reverberations to the present.
its interesting to me that this entry hasn't gotten more traction. i understand it isn't the most technical post (although there's an allusion to infinite scroll...) but technical relevance is hardly a criterion for HN.
i really like his point equating reading online to listening in conversation and its clichéd at this point that listening is more valuable than speaking. i find long-form articles/blogs much more informative because, oftentimes, they deal with more sophisticated ideas (complex ideas tend to take longer to explain). that said, i will be the first to admit that i am guilty of reading the first couple paragraphs of something before bailing or making a comment to one of my friends about it. sometimes i read the rest and find my foot in my mouth but a lot of times i don't.
either way, i am disappointed that this piece isn't more prevalent so we can have a meaningful discussion about the quality of discourse on sites like this. maybe time on page isn't an accurate representation, but i think the easter egg methodology could have some legs. there likely isn't a "cheat-proof" system, but at least those who read the whole piece will be able to differentiate comments from those who didn't.
one of the many things i appreciate the most about this essay is his sense of responsibility. its easy to see the leader of a large organization as an extraordinarily powerful individual, but he notes the seeming smallness of this announcement. he doesn't aim to change the world, but simply do his part. the last paragraph is so poignant because we all witness injustices and often act as bystanders. this is not a new phenomenon, but its important to remember to look at ourselves first and what we're each doing in our everyday lives
the important change being and update to digestive enzymes to further break down carbohydrates and proteins. they also lowered sucralose levels to give users more control over flavoring.
GNU Icecat will be available on Fedora updates-testing repositories for some days. That’s right time to test harshly this new web browser (really it’s not so new considering it’s a fork of Firefox) and leave a positive/negative karma or open a bug.
GNUzilla is the GNU version of the Mozilla suite, and GNU IceCat is the GNU version of the Firefox browser. Its main advantage is an ethical one: it is entirely free software. While the Firefox source code from the Mozilla project is free software, they distribute and recommend non-free software as plug-ins and addons.
In addition, GNU IceCat includes some privacy protection features, included in a separate addon:
1. Some sites refer to zero-size images on other hosts to keep track of cookies. When IceCat detects this mechanism it blocks cookies from the site hosting the zero-length image file. (It is possible to re-enable such a site by removing it from the blocked hosts list.)
2. Other sites rewrite the host name in links redirecting the user to another site, mainly to "spy" on clicks. When this behavior is detected, IceCat shows a message alerting the user.
What's new in this release:
- Still more DirectWrite functions.
- Improvements to the common File Dialog.
- A number of C runtime improvements.
- Various bug fixes.
with regard to "viral ignorance," the author notes:
A sense of cultural righteousness often leads to oversimplification (http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2013/10/11/you-wont-b...) of complex issues, for example, as noted by PhD student David Banks in a blog post about feel-good clickbait phenomenon Upworthy. Sharing Upworthy videos to show your peers how compassionate you are can help the spread of false information. Many gloss over inequality, or present complex socio-political issues in a simplistic light, says Banks. “Ignorance goes viral,” he quips.
great resource, six easy pieces and six not-so-easy pieces so well regarded that his reputation as a communicator precedes him, so hopefully these can be well utilized by anyone with access
we see this clearly in the quality of food for sale in different neighborhoods. grocers in poorer neighborhoods don't have the quality of produce, whereas it's almost difficult (although many still do) to find non grass-fed/free-range/organic/whatever in an upper-class supermarket. so if i'm on food stamps, it doesn't matter what types of healthier foods i'm allowed to receive if they aren't edible. do we really expect people on gov't assistance to travel to rich neighborhoods just to buy groceries? i'm sure the locals would love that, too.
i think that rationality gets extolled, especially in the tech community, as the optimal way to live, but too often its confused with stoicism. although i have no evidence from cognitive science to affirm/deny her proposition that "feelings can be deeper than thought," it is true that people are disposed to moods on a sub-conscious level. although it is also true that we can consciously work to "change" our moods, to me this is too quickly dismissing their importance in the context of our experiences. yes, moods can set the stage for irrationally poor decisions, but my point is that they're important (not that they should govern our lives). by confronting and engaging with the emotional as well as the rational aspects of a situation, we come to a more complete understanding and can take more deliberate action.
Personally I recommend Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time" as well as Brian Greene's "Fabric of the Cosmos." Hedeigger's masterpiece cover's his exploration of the question of the meaning of "being." This might sound vague, but essentially he's asking questions about the meaning (and significance) of existence itself. Greene's work is a much more straightforward discussion of theoretical physics and the theories of space-time, general and special relativity as well as other related topics. At times things are simplified a bit too much, but overall the conceptualizations of a very hard to grasp topic are helpful
"He was also trying to reach elites. In leaking, he hoped to inform and influence a small subculture of tech influencers. Regardless of how Americans reacted to his leaks, he hoped they'd awaken to the ideology and reach of the surveillance state, and that at least some programmers would be inspired to thwart it with technology." -- isn't he talking about the same tech giants that partner w/ the nsa?
"To our knowledge, our study is the first to demonstrate the emergence of polymorphic evolutionarily stable strategies within a robot evolution framework"
On Freund is doing a great job heading up the engineering team at Handybook as well. Really excited for those guys and their contribution to New York tech