A shocking data point about how things are going is that the median real net worth for households headed by someone under 25 dropped 68% from 1984 to 2009, to $3,662.
I remember hearing this on NPR a couple days ago. It's actually 35.[1]
To all who write blog posts: please cite your stats.
Net worth can be negative and quite often is. Quoting percentage changes for values close to zero isn't very meaningful -- a change from $12k to $5k net worth probably has about the same impact as a change from $8k to $1k, but one is a "58% decrease" and one is an "87.5% decrease".
If there's something shocking about this statistic, it's how small the figure is, not the fact that it's dropped by 68%.
Also, from my experience smoking seems to be rare both in Tokyo and the countryside, so I'd like the see some statistics about Japanese being "smoking fiends" before I assertTrue().
I can't find the data for faking child births from the links, but since the Democratic Party instituted "Child Credits" between 2009 and 2012 (iirc), where families would receive something like $200/child/month, I wouldn't be surprised if people were faking births.
He was maybe confused since it's now forbidden to smoke in many large public areas outside of confined spaces marked off for smoking, like the areas around train stations. There's less smoking-and-walking in general.
From my understanding and observations when I visited Japan for a couple of weeks, Japanese people don't eat/drink/smoke while walking. Even for outside vendors, they will eat it on a nearby bench or stand and eat it before moving again.
I did see smokers often in the smoking areas. More than I see in NYC.
An exception to this that I wasn't aware of until just last month is the boarding platform for the bullet trains in some stations. I had to walk through a dense cloud of cigarette smoke on my way to my bullet train car at 9am on a Sunday. That was not pleasant.
Both of you seem to think he said "instead." Consider the clauses rephrased: "Maybe we should start by examining our own community, before ..."
Why? I'd guess because the blog post refers to celebrity hackers bullying another hacker. The community -- more than just these few guys -- can't even behave civilly. It's a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Compare the cause-and-effect of both the situations. One can send someone to jail for life and destroy their finances, reputation etc... the other can hurt someones feelings.
Contending the latter should be addressed before (or even comparatively) to the former is what I take issue with.
Do you really think Paul Graham doesn't know the difference between someone being insulted on Twitter and someone being threatened with federal prison time? You don't think maybe it's you that are missing something, and not him? Because if my response to something he wrote depending on him not noticing the difference between prison and twitter, I would worry that I was missing something. No, wait, I wouldn't; I like giving him shit.
The actual objection here, the reason why pg's comment is "fallacious and ignorant", is a bit fuzzy. People have pointed out a difference between HN users and federal prosecutors, but not why that difference is important. I can only think of one possible line of reasoning, but it's unbelievably hollow. Are you sincerely arguing "It's OK for me to be an unsympathetic asshole because I don't send people to jail"?
>The actual objection here, the reason why pg's comment is "fallacious and ignorant", is a bit fuzzy
Because he is suggesting that "someone said someone else's code was bad" is a more pressing and concerning issue than "the federal government threatened to destroy the life of a young man and drove him to suicide over a trivial non-offense".
>Are you sincerely arguing "It's OK for me to be an unsympathetic asshole because I don't send people to jail"?
I can't imagine how one could make an honest, good faith attempt at communications and come to that conclusion. It seems more like you are deliberately looking for a strawman. I am arguing that pg can in fact make a fallacious and ignorant statement, even if he is aware of the difference between two cases he is comparing.
> Because he is suggesting that "someone said someone else's code was bad" is a more pressing and concerning issue than "the federal government threatened to destroy the life of a young man and drove him to suicide over a trivial non-offense".
As someone once said to me: I can't imagine how someone could make an honest, good-faith attempt at communications and come to that conclusion.
What pg said, albeit more politely, is that calling out federal prosecutors for lacking sympathy when you don't exhibit any yourself is rank hypocrisy.
No, that is not what he said. He very clearly, and completely explicitly stated that we should concern ourselves with this trivial non-issue before we concern ourselves with the serious issue. The only reason we could need to address one issue before we dare to consider another, is due to the overwhelming importance of the issue.
Stop trying to pretend he said something other than what he really said. His words speak for themselves, you don't get to invent an absurd justification to pretend they mean something else. You can read the post yourself, it is still there.
He has no way to know if the people calling out the federal prosecutors have sympathy or not. There is no hypocrisy in Bob saying the prosecutors did something wrong while Joe (who Bob has never met or heard of) is saying Sally wrote some bad code.
The probability that he, or any other decent, civilized person, would make that comment is very, very low. Let's admit that parent, GP etc. are trying to pick on pg and move on.
If empathy were a limited resource that demanded to be spent only in descending order of the seriousness of the potential injury, then you might have a point.
Time is a limited resource. But fair point, as one could spend less time being unsympathetic towards others and instead spend it more valuably being empathetic towards legitimate causes.
Why is this a before/after situation? The people addressing one issue are a completely different group of people than the ones addressing the other. And what is keeping people from addressing both at the same time? And which one is closer to us that we can have a more direct effect on?
This idea that we shouldn't try to address problems in the HN community because there are problems elsewhere in the world is ridiculous.
From https://balancedpayments.com "no redirects. no iframes. no external accounts." That's the unqiue, killer feature right there. If some M&A were to happen between those companies, the existence of this feature is imperative. Specifically, if I have a marketplace I don't want my customers to do any more than a) type their paypal email or b) type their bank account details.
Edit: if you happen to seriously be confused by what I've written, please visit the url and ctrl/cmd f for the quote. Then, take a look at what is below. That is,
You can't do that in Stripe. If you want accomplish the same effect using Stripe, however, your customers will need some kind of account which is external to your site and/or a redirect. Does that help?
As I understand Balanced Payments, it's for the other side of the transaction: Stripe is about people giving you money, but Balanced Payments is for sending others money (where you do a straight ACH deposit). (As opposed to paying them via Stripe, or PayPal, etc)
That's exactly right, but we do offer credit card processing as well. Our processing and payouts functionalities can be coupled or used separately. Check out the docs if you've got more questions: https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/api
Excellent. Not too long ago I asked a partner at a very well known VC firm if they would consider investing a small amount ($x00) in many "startups" to see if the founders would use the money effectively and follow up with a more serious investment if so. He looked at me as though I was asking sarcastically rather than sincerely.
I'm confident that these six new Pinboard/Ptacek/A16Z companies will have excellent return on investment.
Humor aside, there are many smart founders but being brilliant and being money-minded are orthogonal.
The "working with people" comment makes me wonder if they are working with Rethink Robotics.[1] That would be an even more interesting take on this shift.
Translation is as much of an art as it is a science, so I wonder where this project is headed. Le Ton beau de Marot is a great book for illustrating this point.
In college I had studied Japanese and a friend introduced me to the anime cartoon Initial D. His copy had the original Japanese with English subtitles, and so I could assess the translation to some degree -- it was very good. On Netflix you can watch Initial D, but after 2 minutes I had to turn it off because the English dubbing really failed to capture the characters.
As someone noted in this thread, the presenter's synthesized voice in the linked video doesn't seem to reflect his own. If he could have said something like "Wo hui shua putonghua" and had the machine output say the same, it might have been more convincing.
The focus seems to be on pricing, and understandably so considering the nature of people. The implied ethics behind the manufacturing is something I appreciate: I've bought clothing from only countries with better than not labor laws for the past several years. Recently, Burberry has retired their UK-made products in favor of more dubious manufacturing locations; so I've stopped buying Burberry.
I hope this becomes a mainstream designer brand. American Apparel had their own target audience. But I just couldn't understand why no one was able to develop aesthetically pleasing clothing made in the US on par with other designers you may find in Saks.
> I've bought clothing from only countries with better than not labor laws for the past several years.
This has the effect of giving employees who already make, say, $100 / day more options as to where to work, while refusing to give those who make $10/day (or $1/day) workers oversees choices like this.
I find this effect to be stunningly at odds with most of the stated political goals that usually correlate with this opinion.
If redistribution from the $100/day person to the $50/day person is good, why is redistributing employment options from a $10/day person to a $100/day person a good thing?
In theory, I absolutely agree; however, in reality I disagree unless you can show some data that indicates money being spent this way is more ethical than inhibition. Considering the competition for apparel, ample supply of workers, and what actually goes on in factories, if I have the option I will buy from a place that is more likely to uphold human rights.
If you would like a glimpse into my position and haven't already watched the PBS documentary China Blue, I recommend it.
I think there are opportunities for a company to do an incredible amount of good in other countries as well, like we hope to do locally. But at our stage, we don't have the leverage to vet or monitor contractors in a way we'd find acceptable. We aspire someday to make our apparel available outside the United States with manufacturing in the respective areas! We don't think transporting inputs/outputs across the globe multiple times is fair to our environment.
And probably making some 50$/day workers be able to become 100$/workers and helping those with whom you at least have some cultural connection and also just because you also care for your country and why not, letting some jobless youngster start a career in the USA. And not promoting what is akin to slavery in states about whose workmen we have no clue.
Two complementary things can be good at the same time. Giving money to a beggar and not giving to another can both be good for the same person.
dbul, we definitely agree! Almost every brand in our closets is manufactured outside the United States. Companies like Patagonia are leading the way in striving for local manufacturing at scale, but there it is difficult with the traditional retail model, given most companies margins. This is where we think being online-only will really help.
Please reach out at william [at] fromholden.com and stay in touch. We want your ideas on what you'd like us to design!
Create a new email account. Sign up on every form you come across on websites selling various products and services. Get ready to be spammed. When the sales guys get in touch, get them on the phone using a blocked number or a temp. While they are trying to make a sale, instead try to ask questions to get them to admit they have the problem you are solving and you can instead pitch them your solution.
This is creative, I like it. It made me think of how many problems that sales people have that go unsolved, this sounds like one good way to address them directly.
Set up a stripe account today. Ask people to donate an amount that they would pay assuming a monthly rate. Analyze their usage data and payment data to assist you in coming up with payment plans.
I remember hearing this on NPR a couple days ago. It's actually 35.[1]
To all who write blog posts: please cite your stats.
[1] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age-gap...