You just have to suck it up and don't let it bother you as the majority of people are not really laughing at you. You may say something embarrassing like 'je suis chaud', which actually means you're horny and not feeling hot. That will get a chuckle out of people but the next time you will know to use avoir instead.
In Canada many parents will enter their children in the bilingual stream, not only for the benefit of knowing another language but also because it acts as a natural filter by removing the trouble-makers and slower kids. I'm sure if she were to give a math test, she too would find correlation between language and math skills.
Seems like the criteria use to select Thiel Fellows is the same criteria used by top schools. Probably the reason why many return to school, because they have that option available to them.
A better experiment would be something similar to the movie "Trading Places" where they pluck disadvantaged youths from the ghetto, trailer park, or whatever. Send them through a mentorship program or real internship and see if they can become productive citizens. I believe Xavier Neal is on the right track with his School 42.
I'd disagree having a backend written in Go and a front-end written in another language is being minimal. Plus I think the majority of people attracted to Go are fundamentally opposed to Javascript.
The 17% figure also includes dog walking. For myself, the midnight walks with my dog have been very rewarding. Giving me time to think about things and reflect on the day. Although there are a good number of dog owners who see walking their dog as a chore, which is not the right attitude to have for being mindful.
I think the takeaway from ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger, Friendster, MySpace, etc is that as soon as you start losing users, then it's over and there's no winning users back. No matter how ubiquitous the service becomes in one's daily life.
Seriously, they should have went with dedicated boxes on something like Softlayer comme Dropbox. Unlike CPU-cycles, storage needs are relatively predictable as people usually don't remove photos after uploading them.
DO is affordable enough that the minimum you should run are 2 droplets. Having said that, I'm actually fairly impressed with the 500 credit and now you have no excuses to run 2 vms. Consider it a lesson learnt.
Another favourite of teachers is 'je suis fini'.