Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | sublimit's comments login

That's what these list things do regularly. They're just linkbait with either bullshit or obvious advice.


Which is why you're reading them, right?


I don't see what you're hinting at. I'm not their target audience.


So that's why you're reading them?


And that would be better, the world could do without a trillion photo apps and dazed kids trying to be businessmen.


"Decentralized", so it centralizes the functionality of many services. Okay then.

You've bitten off more than you can chew by going against Flickr/Youtube/Soundcloud. You don't really offer anything they don't, just a promise of ethics like "it's free".


All of those are, obviously. Don't try to avert the issue by redefining words.


All I'm asking for is a definition from as many readers as possible, because that's where a discussion is supposed to start. The (until this moment, at least) lack of a collection of definitions is actually horrifying, for me.

If we had a collection of definitions, you'd be surprised how different they all are (personally, I don't agree at all that "political post" can be defined by a list of words). Yet here we are, talking about something we haven't even clearly defined, yet.


- A paradoxical claim of "bad is good" in the title. Off to a good start.

- The content is some neverheard's blog post with no substance to back up the claim. Getting there.

- Analogies, personal stories, vaguely "motivational" Powerpoint lingo, rambling, self-contradictions... Bingo!

Yes, I'm sure this will be quite successful on the HN front page.


Your post adds far less value. Please leave the snark at home.


Yeah, what's up with the trend of maximum black-on-white contrast with a huge font? Do people out there think it looks good, or is it just a default layout they haven't bothered to change?

It hurts my eyes, especially at night, and gives a sort of condescending vibe - "what I'm saying is really important so I'll spell this out like you were reading an alphabet book".


>Do people out there think it looks good...?

Yes. I thought it looked good.


Haha oh wow. They're charging hundreds of dollars to add a free OS into a smartphone. And they expect to get 32 million just for the promise. Someone lock these people up before they do some real damage.


I would downvote you if I could. I'm pretty tired of seeing snark like this and thinking how many people get discouraged of trying something new and bold for fear it would be met with an attitude like yours. Piss off.


Except it's not "new and bold", it's literally Ubuntu on a smartphone for far above the market price. Add some marketing buzzwords about how it will revolutionize computing and people start seeing clothes on the emperor.


I don't know if they'll pull off the desktop integration, but meanwhile can you recommend a phone I can put into a dock and work on as a desktop PC. That seems pretty new and bold to me.


In February, i-mate announced a Windows 8 Phone (not Windows Phone 8) http://blogs.seattletimes.com/brierdudley/2013/02/25/new-win...

A decade or so ago, a Pocket PC would have done the job. I think it was Toshiba who offered a $25 adaptor so you could plug in your PC's USB keyboard.


It looks like the money is for building the hardware too, not just the software.


That's no excuse for an $800 price tag. It just means they're charging customers for their bad decisions (as in not using others' hardware).


It's meant to be cutting edge new hardware, which will not be found in preexisting smartphones (Because it's a hardware project.)


Human races are not a matter of belief. Look at the people around you, look at different cultures and their trends across centuries. You're one of those people who could take a lesson from this article.


"Look at the people around you, look at different cultures": are you talking about races, or cultures?

By the way, when I was younger and there was very little immigration here in Italy, I looked around me and saw people - whole families - with blond hair, with dark hair, with red hair. I saw people (and families) with blue eyes, green eyes, hazel eyes. I saw very tall people, very short people, very smart people, pretty dumb people. And there were people with very pale skin, medium skin, and pretty dark skin. So, how many "races" where there already?

I'm under the impression that, when you talk about race, you really mean something like breed[1]. But there isn't selective breeding in humans - at least, that I'm aware of.

So, the question is not moot. If you have to define "race" scientifically, how do you go about it?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breed


In a discussion about public ignorance of science you are telling somebody the best way to get an answer to something is anecdotal evidence from looking at the people around them? On a topic where we know people have great difficulty objectively comparing things?

I honestly can't tell if you are joking or not.


If you can't provide a basic list of races, and a repeatable procedure for determining which race(s) a given individual belongs to, then I don't see how you can claim this has anything to do with science.


The Stanford and Berkeley admissions offices have basic lists of races and seem to think that they can determine the race of their applicants well enough that there is some justification for their race-based admissions policy. Are you claiming that what these major scientific research institutions are doing has nothing to do with science, that it's all, say, politics?


It certainly has nothing to do with biology, and everything to do with sociology/history and yes, even politics (shocking that a research institution would be involved in politics, I know).

There is, however, a systemic bias tied to things like skin color, or accent, and not at all associated with the ability of such applicants to do well in the institution. As a result of this systemic bias, applicants that would, were they white, be admitted in a heartbeat, are judged significantly more critically, so we attempt to correct this problem by giving them more 'points' or whatever in the admission process for possessing physical attributes that incorrectly hold them back.

I'm not sure what other system you would propose in such an environment?


What race is the President of the United States?


> Human races are not a matter of belief....

Oh. Then please provide the list asked for, and while you're at it, list the genes and loci you use to classify members of a "race".

I mean, if human "races" are not a matter of belief but are a matter of science, that should be really easy for you and the parent commenter.

Right?


Ask any admissions officer at any elite university for the list he uses when defending the need for race-based admissions policy. Ask him what racial categories his major, world-class scientific research institution has chosen to put on their admissions application.

Ask any university humanities department whether their African-American Studies program isn't just as bogus as a Unicorn Studies program since neither group actually exists, and see what they say.

Ask the US federal government what categories they include on the census under "race".

Ask a liberal supporter of minority business set-aside programs for a list of who these so-called "minorities" are. Are they proposing setting aside contracts for businesses run by left-handed people, or do they have a different set of categories in mind? Ask them for their list of who should be given preference over whom.


I recall a story of an expat living in South Africa with his black wife and their daughter, during Apartheid. I believe the very confused racial classification officials finally decided their daughter was "Indian".


African-Americans (or blacks, in the context given) certainly exist as a group. The question is whether you can define them as a race.

To top it off, your first example is incredible. Universities usually lump all Asians into one category though most people would consider an Indian and a Japanese person to be of different race. If that is your list, you have done your argument a grievous injury.


Well, here at Stanford they put Indians and Japanese in different categories, but that's hardly the point. These groupings represent political categorization based on racial categorization. I had thought the tongue-in-cheek nature of my reply would have been more obvious, but I'll make it more explicit: those who most strongly advocate the "no such thing as race" position tend to most strongly advocate race-based preferences when it suits their political agenda without, apparently, seeing a hint of irony. When someone who denies that races exist demands to see my list of races, I suggest he try using the list of races used by his own political allies.

There are different races in the sense that there are different colors on the visible electromagnetic spectrum. There is no "correct" categorization on the spectrum itself, but you can observe clearly different clusters in many situations. Take all the red, green, and blue elements from several video monitors and graph their frequencies and despite that fact that there is a lot of diversity, there won't be a uniform distribution. Three clusters will be easily visible, and you can call them clusters red, green, and blue. In the application, unlike the theoretical spectrum, these categories do exist.

History has clustered human beings, too. Nobody here really denies that humans have descended in a complex tree with lots of crossovers. There is no right way to categorize all leaves of the tree itself into sharp "races". Even so, historical accident has resulted in a lot of clustering of genetic affinity where members of a cluster share lots of relatively recent common ancestors but have mostly very distant common ancestors with members of other clusters. The fact that there are individuals of all sorts on the human tree doesn't mean that there is no clustering.

So Han Chinese, Central American Indians, Northern Europeans, and West Africans diverge long ago and don't intermix genetically for a thousand generations, then history brings them together recently in the Americas where they begin to interbreed.

Nothing wrong with that (at least IMO). Eventually this interbreeding may reduce the clustering to mere random clustering, but today there are still strong, clear clusters of genetic affinity. You can call the clusters races or call them foo, but they aren't just figments of the imagination. The admissions department at Stanford has no difficulty in most cases distinguishing an Indian from a Japanese by genetic affinity with other members of these groups. Whether they then make that two different racial preference categories or assign them to the same "Asian" group is just identity politics.


You're setting me up for a trap with the list thing - if I linked somewhere you'd simply say it was racist data and question the validity of the sources.

Instead I'll go for the route of scientific analogy. If dogs have races, why wouldn't humans? After all, humans are not biologically above or separate from animals. Why would basic evolution stop applying with humans?

Mind you, the existence of races doesn't have to imply inferiority or superiority between them. People seem to be afraid that would happen, so they throw the baby out with the bathwater by denying the whole concept of race altogether. Much like the article says.


Evolution does not work that way. It is a purely pass/fail system.

Also, since the invention of boats and planes, humans have been interbreeding like crazy, so it's pretty much ceasing to matter.


So any justification for race-based admissions and government minority preferences programs is coming to an end, you'd say?


Frankly, I consider it a different issue that has more to with history than evolution. I do believe such programs should end, but whether now or later is up for debate.

Of all the injustices in the world, extra scholarships for racial minorities hardly seems like a high priority, though. I'd rather cut through the Gordian Knot with free education for all (not as an entitlement, but rather as an investment).

We're about 1.5 generations away from race not mattering at all; young people simply don't care. Like so many vestiges of the old world, race-based entitlements will eventually disappear.


Remember when a "bootstrapped startup" was simply called a "company"?


Or just a "service"?


Even after watching it, I don't get what it is.

Like, yeah it's supposed to help high school students familiarize themselves with commercial game development, but how? Do they visit your high school and hold a presentation? If it's just information on a website, why do you need to register? If it wasn't by Valve it'd sound like a scam.


The video stated there will be a forum set up for discussions with the students where you can get answers to questions and insight into the industry. Also said the site will be ever growing and content will be determined by questions people ask.

Don't really understand how it sounded like a scam, you just have to submit your email address to get updates.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: