Were you making jokes at Auschwitz too?
Not meant to be a joke -- far from it. What it WAS was an ill-considered expression of outrage. And, btw, FU.
Readit Newsbenthumb commented on How the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition slate.com/articles/health... · Posted by u/gnosis
benthumb commented on How the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition slate.com/articles/health... · Posted by u/gnosis
With that callous disregard for human life, I hope you are never in a position of power.
Two trips to Auschwitz this year, my friend. I was responding -- in a perverse and ironic fashion -- to this meme that I hear oft repeated that the US gov't wouldn't conspire to kill its own people ...
benthumb commented on How the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition slate.com/articles/health... · Posted by u/gnosis
OK, before the conspiracy theorists on this board start coming out of the woodwork, let's try to keep this in perspective: they were drunks -- they deserved it!
benthumb commented on Ask HN: Where is the real innovation of the past decade? · Posted by u/king3andre
I, for one, am not worried; especially b/c "true innovation" is an entirely subjective quality, and even if
we could agree on a comprehensive definition agreeable to all camps, the effect of innovation is not necessarily salutary. I think it's important to point out that
creativity, 'constructive' engineering endeavors included, is literally destructive. You understand probably better than I that nothing that gets designed today by a reputable engineer is done so w/o giving consideration
to its ecological impact. From my perspective, this is where true innovation needs to start, in cultivating a deep understanding of how we fit into the earth's ECOSYSTEM and cultivating technologically appropriate responses to the same.
On a side note, I also think you highly underestimate the technological advances that continue to be made under the infrastructural hood of the internet, b/c it's almost completely transparent. iPhone apps and websites in and of themselves may not be a big deal, but the growing scale of digital distribution channels and the level and scope of our interconnectedness certainly is. Not to mention, managing this growth in a way that is environmentally sustainable? Not a trivial engineering problem, and, in my estimation one of pressing concern...
benthumb commented on Foreign Language Learning Hacks thangudu.com/post/3725244... · Posted by u/kumarski
Perhaps we are obsessed with learning words because it's the easier problem to solve.
I think that depends on the person and/or language.
My Polish grammar knowledge is now pretty impressive, but I'm having a terrible time trying to remember words, so spend the majority of my time attempting to force memorisation with flash cards.
In a way it's kinda fun - I can go through pages of grammar exercises, conjugating and declining correctly, but with no idea of what Marta did in the past with 101 of somebody's somethings.
I'm delving into learning Polish myself but have been taking mostly a whole language, immersion approach. For example, when I was in Krakow I bought myself a book on CD and the book itself, so I can 'read' along as I listen. I use translation tools to put selected passages into English. I also spend time listening to Polish radio. I know at some point I will have to develop some discipline about tackling grammar in a systematic fashion the way you are doing, but for the moment I guess I'm content to as much as possible to get a feel for the language. Japanese is my second language and its challenges are almost completely different... anyway, good luck!
benthumb commented on Foreign Language Learning Hacks thangudu.com/post/3725244... · Posted by u/kumarski
> Grammar is always the toughest.
I think this depends somewhat on the language. For some, grammar is the first major bottleneck to get to a usable beginner level, but for others, it's pronunciation. For example, Danish grammar is relatively simple (which is one reason Google Translate is very good translating it), but it's quite difficult for non-native speakers to pronounce it intelligibly. I've also heard second-hand that pronunciation is a bigger problem than grammar for beginning Mandarin Chinese speakers.
It turns out that the obstacles are the same for both: tonal inflection. Most people are familiar with this fact as it pertains to Chinese and many of the languages of southeast Asia (Thai, Vietnamese, Cantonese et al) but remain completely unaware that it also a core feature of the languages of Scandinavia, Danish included. btw, Google translate does an excellent job translating Chinese (but a pretty terrible job with a superficially related language like Japanese). It turns out Chinese and English word order are the same.
I'm glad someone has addressed this work-life balance canard. I would go further: getting hard things accomplished tends to take over one's life, and I don't think there's any way around it. Unless, of course, you live in Norway...
I also think humans on an individual basis are inherently unbalanced; that's why we're social creatures.
benthumb commented on John Carmack discusses the art and science of software engineering blogs.uw.edu/ajko/2012/08... · Posted by u/gb
As much as I respect John Carmack, I have to say that I'm a little disappointed that he is rehashing this meme of software development not being a science... OK, wonderful, the state of the art in his shop doesn't rise to the level of being a consistently reproducible, measurable process, but that doesn't mean that this is a permanent condition or that its an insurmountable one.
benthumb commented on How we screwed (almost) the whole Apple community day4.se/how-we-screwed-al... · Posted by u/pohl
>We must become more critical of what we read and think 'Is this reasonable? '
The problem w/ this prescription is that just b/c something is 'unreasonable' to us doesn't make it untrue.
benthumb commented on College was my biggest mistake stevecorona.com/college-w... · Posted by u/sachitgupta
Mac OS X: Avadis Tevanian - B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Rochester, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University
Python: Guido van Rossum - masters degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Amsterdam
Ruby on Rails: David Heinemeier Hansson - bachelor's degree in Computer Science
Ruby: Yukihiro Matsumoto - He graduated with an information science degree from University of Tsukuba
Linux: Linus Torvalds - master's degree in computer science from NODES research group
SpaceX: Elon Musk - From the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, he received an undergraduate degree in Economics, and stayed on another year to finish a second bachelor's degree in physics.
...I could go on