The idea that you've got to be some sort of obsessive wretch with no life outside of tech in order to successfully fill a role at a tech company is nothing but a pernicious myth. So is the idea that you've got to be some ridiculous super-genius. All you have to do is be reasonably smart and capable of learning on the job.
When interviewers at tech companies mistakenly believe that every successful candidate has to be building atom smashers in their spare time, and especially when interviewers at tech companies unconsciously favor candidates that match what their 'stereotypical' candidate looks like, well, then you get a situation like the one described in the article. But this isn't natural or normal or a product of biology - it's just bias perpetuating itself.
C'mon - when I was a teenager I would've had sex with the crack of dawn if I knew it was interested. I doubt anyone capable of getting pregnant is truly 'off the market' for every teenaged boy in their vicinity.
It's more likely that popular representations of teen pregnancy in the media gradually taught enough kids that having a baby in their teens will seriously screw up their life. You only need to see one episode of Teen Mom to know that's nowhere you want to be.
The author's intentions are not remotely obvious. It just as easily could be an anti-Semitic double entendre referring to both the kik situation and Jews, and I'm still not at all certain HN isn't being deliberately trolled with this submission.
Determining how I respond to ethnic slurs against me or my people really isn't up to you, either.
Yeah, I'm thinking you don't have to live with 4chan and Twitter tolerating and increasingly normalizing anonymous bigots calling your ethnic group, which has been the target of genocide before, the equivalent of a nigger.
Do you have any idea how telling me to 'smile a little' about this comes across?
Perhaps my background makes me a little more attuned to this particular word, but 'kike' practically leapt off the page to me.
In English, words ending in a single short vowel followed by a single consonant double the consonant before adding '-ed' to form the past tense. That's the grammatical rule.
I still can't tell if this project is by someone with bad grammar or some 4chan-bred bigot trying to make a double entendre, but either way, it's fucking obnoxious to see it on the front page of Hacker News.
Well, you should start by stopping reading Hacker News, because it's clearly not good for you in your current mental state. I promise, you won't miss anything important.
Next, take some of your time and go volunteer somewhere - go tutor a child or teach someone to read or feed the homeless or whatever else you like, just go help someone out. You're now accomplishing something way more important than interning with some 'top company' somewhere. Congratulations, your existence is now justified.
Finally, now that you're doing something worthwhile for humanity and you're not tormenting yourself by wallowing in everyone's self-promotional bloviating, you can happily focus on learning new things, gradually improving your own skills, and figuring out how to make a big dent in the universe on your own personal schedule, which is different from everybody else's.
Hey, I spent my entire twenties fucking up left and right - whatever you end up doing, I guarantee you're way ahead of me.
For me, it doesn't seem like a massive logical leap to suggest that shutting down a particularly convenient and unique part of the supply chain will have an effect on consumption and therefore the negative effects of consumption. Shutting down The Silk Road isn't quite the same thing as arresting the corner dealer.
Aside from that - let's posit that Ross Ulbricht's arrest and punishment and the shutdown of The Silk Road doesn't impact consumption and the consequent negative effects at all. I've still got no real moral qualms about punishing someone who enriches themselves off so much harm to others. Yes, there are many people in this world who do equivalent harm that we don't punish, and that's unfortunate, but that doesn't change the rightness of Ross's punishment one bit.
Hard drugs are one of those things that have different consequences for different types of people.
An intelligent, wealthy, employable person can dabble with them, have a good time, and usually get away with it. Should they get addicted and screw up their lives, they can usually get help and bounce back without permanent consequences.
People who're a little less well-off intellectually and economically aren't so resilient. Should they get addicted to hard drugs and screw up their lives, they usually don't bounce back from it - their lives are ruined forever.
Since HN is full of intelligent, wealthy, employable people, the comments on this thread don't surprise me a bit. And yes, I agree that drug policy in the United States could stand to be reformed a little. But when evaluating the harm a person's actions can cause to society, I wish people would think a little more about not just themselves, but that vast chunk of society that's not lucky enough to not be as privileged as we are.
It's actually surprisingly easy to get a 'good' reference to give honest feedback about your shortcomings as well as your strengths. This has worked about 90% of the time for me:
Me: So, how would you rate this candidate on a scale of 1-10?
Reference: Oh, around a 9.
Me: A 9? That's great! Tell me, why not a 10?
Reference: [... here's what you actually listen to here ...]
Sometimes it goes this way:
Me: So, how would you rate this candidate on a scale of 1-10?
Reference: Absolutely a 10, no doubt about it.
Me: Outstanding! But seriously, there's got to be something he's not perfect at...
Reference: [... again, the truth generally emerges here ...]
Once people have given you what they feel is a good reference, like a high score out of 10, they're generally fine with talking frankly.
In addition, if the role's really important, you don't stop with just the references they gave you - you note them and then you continue digging, especially if there's people they really should have given as a reference but didn't.
Living in another country is way, way different from going on a vacation in another country. You're removed from the tourist infrastructure that caters to foreigners and you've got to deal with all of the country's bureaucratic procedures and regulations (even simple things like renting an apartment vary ridiculously from country to country). The same places that are fascinating and fun for foreigners to visit are often stressful and annoying for foreigners to live in. Not speaking the native language makes this all the more stressful and bringing people with you that speak your language makes it a lot less likely you'll learn the native language well.
I'm not saying it can't be done, but there's a reason packing off to a completely different country and successfully 'going native' is usually done by single people right out of college who haven't yet experienced a lot of success in their own country. Yes, plenty of older, more-established people do migrate for economic or political reasons, but they usually end up living in ethnic and linguistic enclaves.
My advice? Pick another country that uses English as their primary language, so you don't have that stress going for you, and pick one that's economically developed, so you don't have that stress going for you. You'll still have to adapt to the local bureaucracy, but at least you'll have a fighting chance to understand it. Many English-speaking countries use a points-based system for immigration that favors skilled workers, so you'll also have a much better chance of getting permanent residency.
If the author thinks 'the assumed essential decency of the state and its agents' is the reason people are against conspiracies, he's got no understanding of the issue at all.
Some of us object to conspiracy-mongering because we know people are only human, and have a limited capacity for outrage and action - there's only so much we can do beyond taking care of our families. At the same time, we know that plenty of objectionable things that deserve our attention are happening every day - things that are known and acknowledged to be happening, things that may be perfectly legal and constitutional but are nonetheless repugnant.
When the public's attention is drawn to an entertaining and sexy conspiracy theory, something that might have happened but very very probably didn't, the public's attention is no longer focused on the absolutely-100%-objectionable things taking place every day. That's why conspiracy-mongering is a net loss for society, and why I'll happily crack tinfoil hat jokes at the author's expense - it's not because I think the government's a big group of lovable folks, it's because all that time we're collectively spending writing the script for a future episode of Ancient Aliens could be so much better spent.
About a decade ago, I left a humanities Ph.D. program at Stanford after finishing the coursework, but before starting the dissertation. In my experience, my classmates thought very hard about what they wanted to do with their lives, and were very aware of the career risk involved - if not when they entered the Ph.D. program, certainly by a couple years in. (Hanging out in the graduate lounge with the eighth-year Ph.D. students will do that to you.)
However, most of my classmates were so intensely interested in researching their specialities that they decided the risk was worth taking. After all, it's not like they're particularly suffering during grad school. Grad school in the humanities gives you blissful amounts of time to really geek out in the speciality of your choice, and at top-flight universities, the first few years are free (except for the opportunity cost.) If you get in, your basic expenses and tuition are covered.
Note how we lionize entrepreneurs who intensely pursue a low-probability dream, whether they succeed or fail, while grad students pursuing their own low-probability dream get nothing but scorn. Odd, no? What needs to be changed isn't necessarily grad school, but academic culture - particularly its attitudes towards and adaption to failure. If their community was as understanding of their own failures as ours is of our own, perhaps there wouldn't be such drama about their low rate of success.
The United States has a federal government for a reason. The government is constructed in such a way that the majority doesn't get whatever it wants, if that majority isn't broadly representative of America as a whole.
In particular, the Electoral College ensures presidential candidates must appeal to a wide variety of people, from across multiple regions of America - instead of just focusing on running up the totals in large cities, which is what would happen if the Electoral College didn't exist. In the last election both political parties had to pay attention to the entirety of the electorate, from every county, in states as diverse as Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and Nevada.
You could do America a favor by calling your state representatives and telling them what a goofy idea this is.
While I understand the point you're making, as long as there is a way to deliver criticism while being an asshole and a way to deliver criticism without being an asshole, people who choose the former route are assholes.
I also agree that assholes certainly don't have to apologize, as long as you agree that we're free to carry on considering them assholes.
The Arab world is already awash in antisemitic propaganda. This Twitter account isn't going to move the needle there.
No, this account is aimed at Americans. It shares short, simple, true messages: Hamas is a terrorist organization, Hamas launches hundreds of rockets into Israel, Israel is defending itself, and Israel is rather good at defending itself. The messages are designed to be shared with friends, in order to combat anti-Israeli attitudes. If you look at the IDF's blog (http://www.idfblog.com/), they've even added some game mechanics to the mix with their 'IDF Ranks'.
Objectively, perhaps slightly. It's not hard to find quotes describing this administration as the worst yet at responding to Freedom of Information Act requests. For example:
I've got a question for DHH - or really, anyone with a widely-distributed team: how do you deal with the administrative overhead of hiring employees in a lot of different jurisdictions?
I've used Ambrose in the past, and they could handle the administrivia associated with employees in most American states, but they were no use internationally. And 'professional employer organizations' like Ambrose often only work with organizations that are already doing well (or well-funded).
I'll agree that the current federal government is a bit of an aberration compared to past Liberal and Conservative governments, but playing up differences from the Americans to justify political policies (good or bad - I suppose that depends on your personal politics) has been a big part of Canadian political life since Trudeau's first term in the late '60s.
Whether Canada is actually all that different from America or whether 'different from America' is just used as a cynical political tool is another question.
Yep, this is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about.
A few decent regulations around underwriting mortgages, and most Canadians will conflate that into 'the banking industry shouldn't be touched' -- even though there's only six banks and they charge more in fees than American banks. (Which is saying a lot.)
And god forbid anyone say anything against the CMHC, which is a secretive time-bomb more leveraged than Fannie Mae ever was. Canada might have better underwriting rules for mortgages, but the mortgages themselves are 100% guaranteed by the Canadian taxpayer - for all we know, our housing crisis might still be ahead of us.
When interviewers at tech companies mistakenly believe that every successful candidate has to be building atom smashers in their spare time, and especially when interviewers at tech companies unconsciously favor candidates that match what their 'stereotypical' candidate looks like, well, then you get a situation like the one described in the article. But this isn't natural or normal or a product of biology - it's just bias perpetuating itself.