This. The craze of trying to get Linux on desktop is harming the core of it. Average Joe doesn't care for Linux even though he/she may need it and that's because average Joe doesn't even know that they need Linux for reasons like privacy, better protection from viruses as compared to MS.
The Linux distro people should concentrate more on making the core better than focusing inordinate amounts of efforts on the desktop. Although, gnome is not direct part of Linux, it comes to my mind for a related reason. The efforts spent on going from gnome2 to gnome3 would have been better spent on making gnome2 apps better.
>>Last year, American chess master Nazi Paikidze did not compete in the chess world championships in Iran because of the country’s requirement that she don a hijab.
And most of the leftists and liberals here claim that the hijab is a choice in Islam. Granted, it may be a choice for some muslim women mainly those living in the civilized modern world. But in many cases where Islam rules, these are mandatory rules and many Islamic rules are insulting, at the least, to women.
I am no fan of patents, especially most software patents. I hate them. But in other hard sciences the story seems to be slightly different. In theory the "subsidy to multiple parallel projects" approach seems great but it isn't so in practice. How much subsidy could be given and to how many parallel projects for a given technique? There are risks involved. We don't have infinite resources to throw at multiple parallel projects working on different problems using multiple different techniques.
Great letter by a even greater academician Knuth. Kudos to Knuth who started this great movement, which is being pushed further by another great academician Timothy Gowers [1].
If you think of it from survival point of view, it makes sense. Our survival depended/depends on our brain's ability to perform and not on it's tendency to indulge in enjoyment.
While we don't know what and how much metadata OWS servers keep, we must understand that too much metadata can still be a very bad thing that can enable a 3 letter agency to discover things about users.
I understand your concern about regulations being barrier to entry. But it's a hard (certainly not impossible) to solve problem. I can see that making the regulation less costly (e.g. by reducing administrative overheads wherever possible) we can reduce the cost of regulations themselves.
But the regulations the airliners have to undergo cannot be easily reduced. Aircraft manufacturers should have more stringent regulations than airliners. I'd not fly in a plane that has not certified to have passed all regulatory checks.
>>(Don't get me wrong, shit like Conservapedia has been around for years now. But most of the stuff I read, for better or worse, has been pro-social justice, pro-multiculturalism, etc. until now. Do fewer people buy into that nowadays? Or is what I'm seeing the result of more people participating?)
I am a liberal too and multiculturalism is good to some extent but I hope you don't want to bring Islamic sharia based barbaric culture (e.g. honor killing, stoning women, throwing gays off buildings) in the name of multiculturalism.
But what I have discovered is the left/liberal failure to address the rational fear of Islam (the barbaric, vicious ideology) that is grappling the minds of most sane people.
Liberals and leftists are failing to address these issues. Their response to this threat of Islam is utterly dishonest: they shun even legitimate criticism of the barbaric ideology of Islam under the phony reason of Islamophobia/racism. People have fed up with this.
I don't support Trump to a large extent. But I see that many people see only Trump making an attempt to address this issue in a meaningful manner. No surprise, he cashed on it.
Sam Harris has put it quite aptly: Liberals failure to talk honestly about Islam is responsible for the rise of Trump [1]
I will send an email, as a humane customer, to their customer service email asking a clarification about their policy in this regard. I urge all people on HN also to bombard them with queries regarding such shitty practices they follow.
A thing to learn: Never, ever base anything big on a big player, be it Amazon, Google, or anyone else. They can screw you at any time with or without a valid reason.
Another lesson: All (especially not very big) companies relying on cloud must remember that AWS, GCE, Azure may sound very good, but they can screw your businesses at any time with or without a valid reason. VPS or on-prem should not be discarded without due deliberation.
>>Beyond that, it's not in the news because (a) it's not "new" and (b) there is nothing gained from a collective mob against islam. Bombing doesn't help.
There is no such thing as collective mob against Islam. In fact, there was not even mention of Islam until Trump came along, in the mainstream media. Earlier it was only "Islam is religion of peace" chanting in the mainstream media.
Agreed that bombing doesn't help, but criticism of Islam is very much needed. Islam should ridiculed and shamed in public the same way as Christianity was/is. Islam should not have a special treatment in modern free society. Mainstream media fails in this respect.
>>Being condemned by Americans also doesn't change a single mind in the mideast.
How are you so sure?
I can see many Muslims changing their attitude towards Islam due to whatever criticism they get to hear. In fact many are leaving Islam due to it.
Another factor is why should it matter even if criticism of Islam doesn't change a single mind in mideast?
Condemning and (at least) making people aware of the vicious, misogynist, homophobic, oppressive and cruel ideology is a must first step towards progress and is a duty of the liberal media. Islam is such an ideology, and our pseudo-liberals are cozy with it, which is dangerous for our democracy.
>>Instead, you get the opposite. How many stories have we had about muslims being forced off airplanes because they spoke Arabic or "looked like a terrorist". Of course they're usually professors of philosophy who grew up in the UK and studied at Harvard.
Of course, it's bad to treat Muslims that way, but we must understand that "the rational fear of the ideology of Islam" is responsible for this type of "irrational fear of ordinary Muslims".
I am not a fan of FB but it must be understood that FB is not a news agency.
Another thing to consider here is: FB may be wallgardened, but what about the mainstream news organizations that are sold out to various parties? (e.g. Saudi Islamists have many huge investments/shares in many mainstream news organizations)
Many mainstream news organizations are worse than FB when it comes to spread lies and propaganda in the name of news. We can already feel the influence of Saudi money in the US mainstream media. The mainstream US media is suppressing any criticism of Islam under the flimsy arguments like racism and islamophobia. This is already creating a suffocating atmosphere for true liberals.
A factor to note here is even though the mainstream news organizations claim that they are liberal and left-leaning, they act like barbaric people when it comes to Islam. I do not see any criticism of Islam (e.g. horrendous treatment of women, homosexuals in Islam) in the mainstream media. Not even the discussion of problematic aspects of Islamic scriptures has any place in the mainstream media.
Why should a common man trust the mainstream media news media?
Then you see that it's the social media (FB, whatsapp, twitter, reddit etc) that gives the people what they think is needed to be reported/argued/discussed.
e.g. FB (along with many other social media sites) has helped lot of people to learn the dangers posed by Islamism.
How and why someone as lowly as Trump got elected? This may be very complex topic to analyze as there are many contributing factors but one factor played very important role in his win is the "outright dishonest approach by mainstream news media towards the issue of dangers posed by Islam".
Sam Harris has put it quite aptly: Liberals failure to talk honestly about Islam is responsible for the rise of Trump [1]
I have learnt over the years to not trust many of the pseudo-liberal news organizations like NY times, Guardian etc. e.g. When Charlie Hebdo people were killed by the Islamists, most of these left-leaning pseudo-liberal news agencies were/are very much partial and acted like outright sold-out to Islamists (Saudi funders) when it comes to deal with news related to the vicious and barbaric aspects of Islam and various Islamic cultures.
We must also understand that it's finally the reader's responsibility to filter all news, whether it's from FB or from other established news agencies/organizations.
This. It also annoyingly ignores the problems created by increasing human population which is already very huge now. The huge and increasing human population is a very big problem the humanity is facing as it puts an enormous pressure on environment.
This is not to say that banks are innocent but the article puts a skewed view that is misleading.
>>For most people, this means coming to work some time between 9 and 11 AM (breakfast ends at 10 AM) and leaving between 5 and 8 PM (dinner starts at 6:30 PM). My schedule was a little different: I came to work between 9 and 10 AM and left between 12 and 2 AM. Yes, you read that right. I spent a lot of time in the office, to the extent that my co-workers asked me if I lived there.
This is the kind of devotion to work/study, I wish I could emulate. Especially, given his age, working for 8 hr on company work and then 6-8 hr on your personal work/study without getting distracted is amazing. He should, and he indicated would (which is good), not ignore the work/life balance.
Your comparison is almost like comparing apples with oranges.
India, although has achieved some good results, is mostly a third world country [1] (barring few metro places), and thus various project costs are mostly insignificant as compared to US California. Also cutting corners regarding project safety issues, labor safety issues is not uncommon in third world countries.
It is also similar to China being able to manufacture things at a cheaper price, with almost forced labor and no minimum wages comparable to USA.
It is also similar to Bangladesh being able to manufacture clothes at a cheaper price, with almost forced labor and no minimum wages comparable to USA.
Do you remember what happened in Bhopal? [2]
Granted, the company UCIL was American, but it was the Indian govt which allowed it to go scot-free.
Internet archive is a great project. It has been allowed to be created, in the first place. Then it was and is allowed to exist. This is what I like to about the modern, freer, liberal western democratic nations.
Then there are the great people who spend their time, energy and resources to make such things tick. A great thank you to all those philanthropic people behind the Internet archive and similar such projects. It's because of you, people like me have a hope to learn something significant and with a relatively low cost footprint.
I learned many things thanks to FSF, GNU, Gutenberg, Wikipedia, Internet archive and currently the scihub. I spent only about $10 per month for internet access. Could I even imagine getting such highclass knowledge at such a low cost? Not spent ridiculously high fees for college and still could learn a lot in history, economics, and some things from science, math, technology, engineering and many fields of knowledge. In fact, most of my significant education happened on Internet, thanks to such projects.
I love the USA and the modern liberal western world who made such things happen. Hats off.
Disclaimer: I am from a third world country. $10 p.m. was an expensive thing for me for a large time.
PS: I hope to be able to contribute more to such projects soon. I do contribute a rather insignificant amount as compared to the scale of things.