Eh, this is a little bit of a tangent because there's no reason to block users ever I feel (and in this particular case blocking IE 10+ is stupid), but honestly? It's rarely worth the time to go through and make sure your site works on older browsers. Or that it degrades gracefully.
Yeah, if my site uses canvas, I should probably have a fallback for IE8. But in practice, and I know I'm not alone here: Unless I see that IE8 makes up a significant part of my site's traffic, fuck it.
There are already enough vendor issues between the latest versions of the big 4 (Chrome/FF/Safari/IE), spending more time going through old versions of those 4 will drive you bonkers.
It's rarely worth it and spending any amount of time catering to those users is almost assuredly not a good use of your time.
I think it's just the inevitability of any site that starts gaining mass appeal. It's the heat death of the universe: you can try and stop it, but entropy will increase no matter what. Sure, zealous moderators can be a catalyst for it, but it was going to happen spontaneously anyway.
People who contribute to sites like reddit enjoy feeling like part of a community. It's hard to feel like you're part of a community when that community starts becoming millions of people. Really hard.
Sure, things like subreddits help - but only slightly. Subreddits that are worthwhile tend to become default subreddits after awhile, and then you're back to square one. Without extremely heavy-handed moderation (and really, you're just stemming the tide at that point), it's hard to feel like you're not lost at sea among people appealing to the lowest common denominator.
And sure, it'll probably happen to HN too. Maybe not, maybe HN is niche enough to keep staying niche.
But unless you have a vested interest in a site like reddit, you might as well accept it and enjoy the ride while it lasts.
Not to sound like a complete dick, but... duh? Is this a controversial opinion really from a finance perspective? I was under the impression that almost all arguments surrounding rent control are:
1) Moral/legal arguments
2) Whether rent control is the small problem and lack of housing development due to zoning laws or NIMBYism or conspiracy or whatever is the much bigger problem - i.e. rent control is one small facet of the housing issues in SF.
The solution where each participant in a market acts to optimize their own returns is sometimes nowhere near the global optimum allocation of resources (for basically _any_ theory of optimum allocation other than "whatever the market did").
Obviously also applicable to SF and Manhattan/Brooklyn.
It's interesting to compare this to other cities: a cursory glance at LA craigslist shows some apartments in nice areas that would easily cost twice as much in SF/Manhattan. Same with Chicago.
Is it really just population density? A cursory google search says that SF's population density is about 17,000 people per sq. mi, which is about the same as West Hollywood. Yet looking at apartments in West Hollywood, I see apartments much nicer than I would in SF for the price. Maybe I'm grossly oversimplifying though.
But then is the answer really just 'sprawl'? Are Chicago and LA only 'reasonably priced' because they're so expansive? Is that how our cities have to move lest they suffer some sort of housing implosion?
As it is, I don't understand how anyone earning minimum wage lives in SF/Manhattan - or why they'd even want to commute in to Manhattan to work for Chipotle if they don't.
The answer isn't just sprawl, it's "lots of housing", which can mean more tall apartment buildings on a little land instead of individual homes on a lot of land.
Unfortunately, San Francisco proper is very very hostile to real estate development for a variety of reasons and is trapped in a steadily worsening local maximum. A large part of that is policies like rent control, which bestows a sort of quasi-ownership of an apartment that may be even more effective than real ownership at spreading around the benefits of what the article calls a "tax by the haves on the have-nots, and by the old on the young."
Building out the suburbs could also be an answer if you could trust the region's government agencies to provide decent transit options, whether public transit or highways. You can't. At least if you're commuting to work in Manhattan you have a cheap $2.50 subway ride into town from many places that are much further away than you do in San Francisco.
Man. If there was ever a guy I feel awful for, it's moot.
Maybe awful isn't the right word, but sympathetic for.
Short of doing something incredibly brilliant in the future (which I wouldn't put beyond him), his life will be summed up as "the creator of 4chan" for quite some time to come.
He's a fairly well-known guy with a decent amount of celebrity to him, but it sounds like 4chan was overall a net negative for him monetarily. Further, 4chan is summed up as an incredibly hateful place to many people, basically "the worst part of the internet." His name is synonymous with that for likely the rest of his days.
Sure, it's earned him some credibility in the tech community and he can likely leverage that into something great if he really wants to - though it sounds like he wants to take a break from that for awhile.
I live in NYC and I've seen moot a couple of times in the past couple years. Both times he was doing something mundane like waiting for the train, and every time he was surrounded by what were clearly a group of anons asking him questions. Every time he seemed a little uncomfortable, like he was too polite to admit that he had grown out of 4chan and its community.
I imagine his personal life is a semi-constant reminder that he'll never be able to escape from 4chan, even by resigning. Lots of people will continue to associate him with the severe outbursts of hatred that stemmed from 4chan occasionally. Lots of anons will continue to encircle him while he's waiting for the 1 train.
I don't know, maybe I read too much into it. Or maybe I didn't and that's why he wants to go do something far removed from the internet.
Personally, I think that moot has done more to further the internet and modern culture than almost anybody out there--and that includes Reddit (and arguably Something Awful, but nobody wants to waste tenbux anyways).
4chan has provided and continues to provide a raw visage of how people behave given total anonymity. It has a wide ecosystem of boards and interests, and in the last six years has certainly left everyone who's lurked there a changed person.
Remember: near all of the bullshit memery, the image macros, the open discussion, the invasions, all started with 4chan.
If anybody else is successful, it's probably because they can point to the awesome parts of 4chan and say "We want to build that, but friendlier, better moderated, and less anonymous". It was a proof-of-concept, and a brilliant one.
It'll probably die off in the next five years, but it's done some amazing things and brought a lot of people together.
>4chan has provided and continues to provide a raw visage of how people behave given total anonymity.
I think that is a foregone conclusion. It shows how people can behave. But I think other behaviours are also possible.
It is a community so it will be joined by like minded individuals, creating a self-perpetuating culture.
Another anonymous community may create a different culture.
> And in the end you don't save the world or some such nonsense. You simply conclude your own story, and life goes on.
I guess I don't see those two as being at odds - I think it's entirely possible to have a well-developed and deep setting while still having a traditional "save the world" game.
For example, I don't think it's controversial to say that the Elder Scrolls series has a very deep and thoroughly developed setting, but in Skyrim you're the chosen one who stops a world-ending evil. In Dark Souls you're literally known as the "Chosen Undead", and people have spent months exploring the setting and lore of that game.
I'd even say that Mass Effect has a decently thorough lore and history if you want to look for it (the history of the Genophage or the Geth for example).
Rather, I think modern games do a great job of taking the "save the world" trope and inverting it slightly: you saved the world, but at what cost?
In Mass Effect you save the entire galaxy from robots, at the cost of forever losing the ability for FTL travel (and stranding a lot of people where they are in the galaxy). In Skyrim you can save the continent from the evil imperial invaders, but it's heavily implied that a third party wants exactly that in order to split the empire apart and invade while it's weak. Dark Souls pretty much bashes you over the head with the fact that saving the world is essentially fighting a losing battle.
> In Mass Effect you save the entire galaxy from robots, at the cost of forever losing the ability for FTL travel (and stranding a lot of people where they are in the galaxy).
There are different ways you can save the galaxy (you can also fail to do that, and the world goes on, organic life gets reset). You can just destroy the robots, along with all other artificial life forms - some of them are those for whose right to live you just fought (if you choose so). You can resolve the issue by performing what amounts to a galactic-scale rape, changing everyone without their consent. Or you can risk becoming the very force you tried to destroy, hoping that you have enough morality in yourself to not go dark yourself.
I spent something around 20 minutes just sitting there and thinking those choices through. Which one is the right thing to do?
I think they did a good job of taking the "save the world" trope and turning it into a huge moral conundrum for the player.
Nothing silly about it. It's a very stark reminder that death doesn't just take the old, or the chronically infirm, or the careless. Sometimes it's very swift, subtle, and brutal.
We could easily be diagnosed with something tomorrow and be dead within two years, and probably nothing can save us.
While it's true that you could easily be killed tomorrow in a car accident, I think many of us really believe that we have more agency when it comes to accidental death. That we're the savvy pedestrian, the defensive driver who won't be a statistic. We're smart and quick enough to make the right decision when it comes to car accidents.
But things like aggressive lung cancer? You're probably a goner, and no amount of intelligence or quick reaction can save you. And we know that.
I'd say that's heavily biased by the fact that Chappelle spent lots of time growing up in Ohio (and specifically Yellow Springs).
Lots of people have seemingly irrationally strong attachments to their hometowns - not quite the same as randomly stumbling upon OKC and deciding it's what you've wanted all along, you know?
And Chappelle's probably not the greatest example, since he very famously got fed up with his celebrity status and wanted to retreat from the world a little. Surprised you didn't go to Lebron instead.
>Lots of people have seemingly irrationally strong attachments to their hometowns
Nobody with a modicum of intelligence thinks that is irrational. Of course people are going to have strong attachments to a place where they spent a major portion of their childhood making memories and relationships.
The only seemingly irrational thing would be indifference. You don't spend 18 years in a place and not have any emotional reaction to it (good or bad).
I thought it was pretty clear that the implied irrational part of it is the opportunity cost of choosing your hometown, not the actual attachment itself.
If I'm a brilliant mathematician or a world-class athlete and I choose Kansas over Cambridge/Boston, then yeah, plenty of people are going to think that my attachment to Kansas is making me act irrationally. I don't think they lack a "modicum of intelligence" because of that thought.
There are obviously exceptions where your choice of location doesn't matter, but if you're a high performer then it frequently does (with the obvious notable exceptions e.g. Prince).
[EDIT: I originally just had a quip about not being a sports fan, but I thought you deserved a real reply.]
As a mathematician by training, I would venture to say that there are probably few mathematicians who are able to choose a location first and then a suitable job in academia or industry (in academia, that number is almost surely zero).
In particular, if you're an academic mathematician and you ended up in Kansas, then that probably means that you're working at the University of Kansas or Kansas State University.
Or Garnett (Minnesota). Not his hometown, but longest place of residence.
Also, Buffet, Prince, Eminem, etc. You can find an argument about a lot of places. The fact that people write of (any) place without spending any amounts of time there, speaks more about them than the place they're referencing.
> Lawyers and doctors are asked trivial questions just a handful of times in their careers during their bar examinations and boards.
Of course, this obviously means there are examinations and governing boards that certify laywers and doctors as fit to practice. I doubt most people in the industry would prefer that we start moving towards that.
Or maybe not. I dunno. Those of us who went through traditional CS programs would certainly benefit from such a system greatly. But the lack of formal entry barriers is part of what makes the industry fantastic, and perhaps the very fluid and sometimes irritating interview process is just part of keeping those entry barriers away from tech.
> Can you help me to understand victim blaming? Is it victim blaming to say someone was exercising poor risk management?
Er, yeah, it is. The victim always knows they exercised "poor risk management", to some degree. You don't need to reinforce that point. It's not what the takeaway lesson should ever be. It detracts attention (and implicitly averts blame) from the perpetrator.
We don't aspire to live in a world where "risk management" becomes the takeaway lesson from events perpetrated by conscious actors (i.e. you should always exercise risk management when it comes to things like hurricanes).
Because then you start saying things like:
"She shouldn't have been walking alone at night."
"She shouldn't have been wearing that dress."
"If he didn't want to get raped he shouldn't have gone to prison."
Yeah, if my site uses canvas, I should probably have a fallback for IE8. But in practice, and I know I'm not alone here: Unless I see that IE8 makes up a significant part of my site's traffic, fuck it.
There are already enough vendor issues between the latest versions of the big 4 (Chrome/FF/Safari/IE), spending more time going through old versions of those 4 will drive you bonkers.
It's rarely worth it and spending any amount of time catering to those users is almost assuredly not a good use of your time.