I need help integrating Lucene/Solr (a search indexer with a REST API) into WikiPaper (http://wikipaper.org). You can do the backend in whatever language you like. It's an independent project so you don't need to read a ton of code to get up to speed.
I'm not sure how long it will take, probably some number of weekends. Any help is appreciated!
There are many, many disadvantages of incorporating here. For example, if you are an atheist, or have any other ideas that are anti-mainstream (eg. are critical of dogmatic feminism or runaway capitalism) you may be targeted by the surveillance state, which in my case has already happened.
The added stress compounds the existing stress of running a startup.
If YC opened an international branch, I would leave in a heartbeat. I'm also looking into Techstars, which seems to have some international presence. I really hope YC takes some leadership here.
- Add an upper bound to the number of investment properties someone can own. Owning more than one or two is clearly parasitic behavior. Banning this parasitic behavior allows breathing room for minorities to get onto the property ladder.
- Add tax subsidies to encourage employees working from home. This will help stop gentrification, etc, since developers can work from unconventional neighborhoods more easily, and also means that employees don't have to pay extortionary rent/interest for housing.
This attitude is so defeatist. It's not hard for executives to look at companies in free countries vs companies in oppressive countries and see which ones are doing better. It makes business sense for them to try to maintain at least some freedom.
If people want to see these features implemented, find someone at Google and, let them know! Eventually it will happen.
Although I agree with using your own stuff instead of theirs.
Their purpose is to make money. Therefore, entities that make it harder to make money (eg an oppressive government) will be seen as threats. Therefore, they take actions like convincing the entire internet to use https.
It's not as simple as "invade privacy" = "profit!". They sell advertising, that's their actual business model.
I would imagine they haven't done it simply because the execs haven't thought about it or don't understand end-to-end encryption. If you know someone at google, give them a prod to do it.
Adding end-to-end encryption to the gmail app would not be difficult. It would work similarly to end-to-end encryption in whatsapp, and would be massive boon for freedom worldwide.
Google is not pro-NSA spying, not by a long shot, despite common belief. They are the ones who convinced the entire web to turn to HTTPS, for instance. Check out: http://www.google.com/takeaction.
Additionally Sergey Brin grew up in the Soviet Union until the age of 6, his father was marginalized, he knows the cost of a dysfunctional society.
Turning the USA into 1984 isn't good business sense, so even for that reason alone Google would do it (that is, add end-to-end encryption, etc).
I would actually argue that what we have today is worse than 1984. If you read the book, the protagonists have economic security/stability, even if in a totalitarian government. We have both nightmare spying AND economic insecurity.
First off some context for this rant: a lot of people don't realize it but we are a lot closer to a post-scarcity world than the world would have you think. Check out this chart which shows GDP per capita since the 1950's. The productivity gains since the 1950's have been absolutely incredible, and the quality of life back then was pretty good.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA
So, have you ever noticed there's never any dialogue about encouraging men to be stay at home dads, or reducing the overall household number of hours worked per week? Never. The dialogue is always about the "wage gap" and "women have value too" and "rape culture" and "microaggressions". Men who are stay at home dads still get shamed just as much as they did during the 1950's. This is how you know it's a sham - there is never any serious dialogue about actual equality. Income has in no way, shape, or form, kept up the with the GDP per capita shown in the chart above. There's never any explorations of policies that would actually increase equality, like restricting the number of "investment properties" a man or woman can own, behavior which is clearly parasitic. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_productivity_and_...
It's not in corporate interests to have people have actual equality. Increasing the labor pool without discussions of actual equality makes it so that people can be kept in debt, wages go down and the nexus of power moves away from the family and towards the corporation, which is what is happening.
There's also the constant screaming of "women have value too". The implication here is that if you are not working for money you have no value. Despite common belief, in fact it IS possible to generate value outside of a money context. Many of the world's greatest achievements have occured outside a money context, eg. the discovery of calculus, wikipedia, linux, countless famous works of art, literature, and philosophy. By saying that you only have value if you earn money is throwing many of the world's most accomplished people under a bus. The reason why "money is the only form of value" is such a horrible mentality is that it leads to people like Mozart dying in poverty and being thrown into a ditch, which actually happened.
Check out charts of combined household numbers of hours worked, you'll see it's going way UP not down, despite the GDP per capita chart shown above. There is clearly something dark in that picture.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/working/chart17.pdf
I don't think these are idle complaints - feminism in its current form (money above all) is an ideology that's on a direct collision course with the whole 'robots are about to take all the jobs' reality, which I think is going to come a lot sooner than we realize, and when these two phenoma collide, what's going to happen is that it's not going to be equality (sorry folks) it's going to be Brave New World, an immensely stratified society.
What's incredible to me is that someone predicted this nearly 100 years ago. Aldous Huxley, you are a genius.
Even Egyptian slaves weren't at the bottom of the ladder (eg. they had subservient wives). Not advocating "sexism" here but it's worth mentioning subservience. Software engineers often really are at the bottom of the ladder, however. Food for thought.
I'm not sure how long it will take, probably some number of weekends. Any help is appreciated!