Is there a HN, that's not affiliated with this muttonhead? I love the content here, but I feel gross coming here knowing it's affiliated with such a sleazy billionaire.
Do you mean like two monkeys had hardcore monkey sex and the resulting baby was a human? Yeah... I don't know if I could respect their intellect. I don't think that's how the evidence for Evolution works...
Without going into detail, I can definitely relate to how you feel now and in the past.
I really don't think anyone is going to come up with your own personal reason for living. In the simplest biological terms, our purpose is to survive long enough to procreate or pass on our genetic information. Beyond that, it's up to you!
You'd be surprised at what sort of free and low-cost mental health assistance is available in some cities in the USA. Within the last 5 years, there's a lot more awareness and money being spent on mental health care. Google for "low cost mental health care" in your area before you've written off professional health. If you do get a prescription, try to find a professional therapist who's also willing to do non-prescription services (such as CBT/cognitive based therapy).
I personally think diet and exercise (weightlifting, walking, yoga, dancing, swimming, roller-skating, biking, running, etc.) has helped my mental health immensely. There is something about the chemical cocktail from exercise that has been a real life saver for me and for many others (anecdotal and measured scientifically).
On the other side of the scale, I think technology like computers and smartphones haven't helped my mental health in any beneficial way. I remember people being more personally connected before Facebook, Twitter and all of the rest of the "social networks". I doesn't really feel like our brains are optimized for spending 8+ hours a day in front of a computer screen. 20 years ago I remember telling people I was a programmer and spent most of the day in front of a computer screen. Now it seems like most jobs are in front of a computer of some sort. I fear for the future generations who won't have the ability to disconnect from technology in the way I did as a kid and a young man.
I like this. I would imagine this takes some of the stress out of Rob's daily life and will allow him to focus on creating new videos. He could be the next Jon Galloway! (Who Wants To Be a Pluralsight Millionaire?!)
As a software developer, which companies (if any) can we trust when selecting programming stacks and hosting solutions. I'm currently not doing anything illegal (that I know of), but I don't like the idea of supporting those who conspire with the government (even if they're 'forced to'). I'd feel pretty 'unclean' about supporting anything that came out of or was associated with Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc. Who does that leave???
If you're interested, I have replicated the /json and /db services for a few of the popular ASP.NET options for creating JSON services.
- mono-httphandler
- mono-mvc-dapper
- mono-mvc-nhibernate
- mono-mvc-raw
- mono-servicestack
Notes:
1) All projects use MySQL as the database.
2) mono-httphandler uses bare-bones HttpHandlers and will probably be the best performer because there is no real "framework" involved. It mirrors the Java servlet example. As I believe JSON serialization is one of the key indicators of performance, it has the option of using 3 different JSON serializers popular in the .NET world: NewtonSoft, ServiceStack and the default ASP.NET MVC serializer from System.Web.Extensions.dll. At present the rest of the ASP.NET MVC projects are using the default JSON serializer and should probably changed to use the fastest option (as servlet uses Jackson) which is probably going to be ServiceStack's serializer.
4) Nhibernate is a popular full-featured ORM that is similar to Java's Hibernate ORM.
5) mono-mvc-raw uses bare-bones ADO.NET calls for database access.
6) mono-servicestack uses the ServiceStack framework which is supposed to have top performance for creating REST web services using .NET. It has it's own micro-ORM and JSON serializer which are supposed to be high performers. More info here: http://www.servicestack.net/benchmarks/
Tim Ferris's second book, the 4 Hour Body is a decent starting place for beginners who want to lose weight, increase muscle mass, get stronger and a bunch of other performance/fitness related topics. There's a chapter called 'The Harajuku Moment' where he outlines the steps that he used to help Rails-nerd Chad Fowler lose 70+ pounds of weight and increase his strength. I'd highly recommend Tim's book (The 4 Hour Body) to anyone who's interested in "hacking your body".
Another book/person I'd recommend HIGHLY is Kelly Starrett. He recently did a 2 day seminar on Creative Live about resolving pain, preventing injury and optimizing athletic performance. He's also coming out with a book at the end of April called "Becoming a Supple Leopard". You can check out a 50 page preview of the book below:
Very few (if any) of those you have listed are "unskilled" blue collar jobs. The kind that my grandparents were able to raise 4 and 5 children families on. We've traded all of our union factory jobs for fast-food, minimum wage jobs that you can't support a family on. And for what? Are our electronics/clothes/food/cars any cheaper or a better value?
Come on, now?! You don't think there might be some problem with the complete disappearance of unskilled blue-collar jobs in America? Where did this rampant increase in drug/alcohol and mental health problems come from? Where were they in the 60s/70s/80s? Could it be that drug/alcohol/mental health problems occur or lead to homelessness when you don't have a sustainable income? I think a lot of people in the tech industry who are paid oodles of money to write basic code (and surf the web or cyberloaf for a good number of hours) are woefully ignorant to the income inequities in America. Who will speak for them when their cushy jobs are shipped overseas (just like the blue-collar workers), so that the stock holders can add another yacht to their evergrowing fleet.
Why is email/password more attractive than billing information (credit card or bank/savings account) to hackers? What's the end goal here? I would assume that it's some sort of monetary compensation? With an email and a password, you might have access to someone's banking website, but you have to guess which bank they use and you have to assume that they used the same password. It doesn't seem practical to do a massive scripted attack against a bank's website with a possible list of emails/passwords that may or may not exist on a specific bank's web site.
Now, credit card information on the other hand might be useful. There's a black market for credit card numbers, especially if they include the verification code (CSC/CVV/etc).
If hackers have access to a site's database that contains user authentication data why are we to assume that the hackers didn't have access to payment information or that they didn't have a desire to access it?
It would be interesting to go back in a time machine and see what a coffee shop looked like before free wifi, laptops and cell phones. I can't even remember... did people have conversations? Read books?