TALKIE-1930: Computers in the future may be employed in offices where calculations are required to be made, and where the nature of the business does not demand a very high degree of knowledge. The occupation will be a steady one, and the remuneration will be sufficient to afford a comfortable livelihood. The hours of attendance will probably be from ten to six.

USER: and digital computers?

TALKIE-1930: Computers who make use of machines will be distinguished from digital computers, who perform their operations by means of the fingers alone. The former will be employed in offices and public establishments, where a great number of calculations have to be made; the latter in private houses, and by individuals.

(for those confused, "computer" was, at the time, a human occupation)

I love this.

Per NYTimes: “It was pretty epic on Attempt 1,” Kate Tice, a senior quality engineering manager at SpaceX, said of the last test flight’s tower catch on the company’s livestream. “But the safety of the teams and the public and the pad itself are paramount.”

Not sure what would have changed compared to the first launch, other than Trump’s presence - and they haven’t described any anomalies.

A launch is one thing: lots of explosive potential, but the kinetic energy is quickly dispersed.

The KE of a botched landing of what’s essentially a ballistic missile would be a whole lot more concentrated…

Or maybe they just didn’t have time to file a modified flight plan for it to enter even-more-specially-restricted controlled airspace.

* The FARS data is “normalized” by unpublished internal iSeeCars estimates of miles driven; the underlying “study” is a marketing blog post for their company.

* FARS data distinguishes between driver and occupant fatalities - the “study” looks only at occupant fatalities, which is not what most people would reasonably expect given the headline.

* One might reasonably suspect Tesla’s long history of touting 5-star safety ratings and advanced safety tech could lead to passengers being lulled into a false sense of security, and being less likely to use seatbelts.

Driver fatalities and seatbelt use are right there in the FARS data - one wonders why these weren’t considered and incorporated in the “study”.

Anyhow, a note to the HN user: don’t upvote FUD-sowing headlines based on blog posts about unscientific “studies” that are really just submarine PR; they carry none of the credibility of the underlying studies, and are a disservice to the scientists and public servants who rigorously and faithfully collect and analyze this data.

HN used to be better than this…

Occam’s razor suggests it was more likely a human pretending to be her daughter.

I’m guessing after she realized that the voice wasn’t her daughter, the mother convinced herself it must have been a deepfake to explain herself having been so easily convinced.

Think of it like the light and dark sides of the force: skill in rhetoric can just as easily be used to derail conversations or slide into sophistry as it can to explore the foundations of an idea, argument, or position in search of insight.

Intellectual honesty tends to require a certain restraint from the practitioner, whereas resentment and anger can feed into deliberate conversational malice.

The forms of discourse at St. John’s contribute greatly to earnest inquiry in the classroom setting: the system of formal address, for instance, in which other students are addressed as, say, “Ms. Klein” or “Mr. Armstrong” in class creates an incredible separation between daily life and the classroom - enabling you to treat someone’s statements and arguments at face value.

My experience with St. John’s was that the Tutors (called professors anywhere else) generally managed to guide and keep conversations on track with a light, deft hand on such occasions as intervention was called for - this was increasingly rarely over the course of the Program, however, as keeping things directed and on track was primarily enforced by one’s fellow students, whose urgent pursuit of truth and understanding brooked no interference, and suffered very little foolishness.

My guess is your former coworker was probably just as argumentative before he came to St. John’s as when you met him. The school isn’t formative in the sense of changing your nature; it’s formative in the sense of giving you the tools to better understand the world around you. Most people left with the same personalities and political views they came in with.

(Likewise, at its founding in 1696, the college was called King William’s School; a name that probably sounded a bit off in post-Revolutionary America, leading to the adoption of the current name in 1784, a year after the War.)

The monolithic, slow-to-change Great Books list that forms the core of the St John’s undergraduate Reading List is famously and self-consciously concerned primarily and narrowly with the Western intellectual tradition that informed the Founding Fathers, etc. - so as, in the creators’ thinking, to prepare graduates for citizenship in a liberal democracy.

It’s likely no one is more critical of the List than the students and faculty, who argue constantly over omissions, additions, and alterations (there is barely enough time to read all the works on the Program, so for each added, one must often be taken out).

The historical context of the creation of the Reading List accounts for its significant bias towards dead white cis men, as the creators of the list were themselves white cis men at a time when the American education system was not integrated.

(You may be pleased to hear that, for at least the last several decades, the college has admitted people of all colors and genders!)

That said, reading alone misses the meat of “The Program” (always capitalized!) - it’s the searching, pointed, urgent discussion of a work with others who share a common language (from all having read and discussed the earlier works in the Program) that provoked deep thought and reflection, held me to account for intellectual rigor, and built up my faculty for critical thinking.

Points: 5

# Comments: 7

Above, you mentioned a "bandaid" solution of increasing funding for YC founders to account for skyrocketing rent - but this only exacerbates the problem for everyone else, including YC companies' employees and the entire ecosystem that supports them.

Tech workers' willingness and ability to pay ever-increasing rent, underwritten by salaries drawn from irrationally exuberant venture capital investment in tech (low interest rates elsewhere), is driving a housing bubble that, in a vicious cycle, is then further fueled by property investment justified by ever-increasing rents.

I guess I was looking more for YC to take a leading role here in proposing solutions, rather than passively hoping for a fix. The simplest, as it seems to me: open a bleeder valve by providing incentives for successful YC companies to "settle" other startup hubs, or even just acting as a broker for bidding by those locations. I'm sure there are smarter fixes, but I can't see the harm in enacting these.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9846484

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

(See http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1446:_Landing for the background)

So, if you don't have Clash of Clans installed, they can show you a Clash of Clans ad. If do you have Clash of Clans installed, they can then prompt you to reengage with it, or suggest other apps you're likely to install on the basis of your having shown an interest in games.