flueedo

I've been off of facebook for years now, but I doubt nowadays most people see the "like" buttons as an instrument for teaching the website algorithms to help keep themselves open minded. (Assuming this stratategy indeed works, since it's known this isn't the only variable they consider)

And I don't think this isn't the purpose of feed 'customization' either. It's about making money by assuring advertisers that their ads will be paid some attention to. In order to do that, they need to try and keep people's eyeballs glued to the screen as much as possible.

*customer

I would imagine that in the sense of "usable product" for costumers, things will level out somehow.

But waste would certainly be lessened within certain steps of production. For example, sometimes you have containers used for long distance transportation, which you can't remove all of a product from, and you have to wash in between refillings.

15 billion to develop and deploy to space over four thousand satelites (not ignoring the fact that developing the prototype costs orders of magnitude more than simply assemblying the rest) seems like a gross underestimation...

According to Wikpedia the all countries which haven't adopted the Metric System are: USA, Liberia, Myanmar.

Yep, and, not that having to learn and become acquainted with shortcomings of new sets of languages/tools every other year isn't a fact of life for many devs that one ought to just accept. But having something run just (or as close as possible to) the same across many platforms make it more likely that that knowledge you acquired will remain among your best options when approaching a wide range of problems for a longer time.

*plaguing

We shouldn't. But one is free to make that choice, while awaiting for the possible improvements that would resolve the website issues praguing them.

Why not get one of the hacker news reader apps? I use one called 'Materialistic'.

I too watch from the sidelines, but I think that if I were a voter I would either not vote or vote third candidate. I wish there wasn't so many troubling things about Hillary's deals and ties.

I think that once one has accepted that he/she must start at that moment no matter what, and it will a long time till finishing, then starting with the hard stuff makes all the sense. You might be feeling drained by the end, when you were to take on those hard problems/subjects. Or the easier stuff you can attack at other times, during breaks, while it might be difficult to advance on the harder stuff without a bigger more comfortable time frame.

If you put a bunch of humans (children) together, each with no previous knowledge of language, on an isolated island, they will in all likelihood come up with one. (Something close to this, as a live example, is a documented case I remember having read years ago of an all-new sign-language that emerged spontaneously among a large group neglected deaf-mute children at an institution a few decades ago. I think this was in Nicaragua or some other country in that region) What I mean is, our linguistic ability isn't dependent on culture (though tremendously enriched by it), it's biological. Why wouldn't the same hold for dolphins. I think they're very smart, but I don't believe they ever had something we could decently call a language.

And what do businesses say when they actually need people with some quality? It is usually a natural consequence of your skills being in high demand that you'll be able to ask for a higher salary. Business may be saying that only because those are expensive as you charge, but if however they are actually in need of certain skills those would probably be expensive just the same.

Considering that 1)Scientific knowledge is so important for everything in our global society and 2)The US stats in science education are below those in other developed economies, I'd say probably the demand is real.

Yeah but being a translator is a different kind of activity from being an engineer, architect or craftsman. It feels to me that being a Software Engineer -- though currently I've been working with something else -- is kinda like (grossly simplifying it) a really complicated game of Lego or Tetris, where the 'pieces' (APIs, routines, functions, protocols, legacy code, etc, etc) don't always fit where/how they were supposed to, sometimes you can tweak them, but sometimes they're black boxes. Sometimes you have to build some pieces, after giving up on trying to make do with what you got. I think that's what the OP means by time wasted. We waste a lot of time getting the pieces to fit and (as much as we can verify) work as they should when we should be spending our time focusing on what structure we want built after all the pieces are in place.

Engineers, architects and craftsmen don't work, nor waste anywhere near as much time, with as many "pieces" (if any) that behave in such erratic ways.

I think 'illegal' isn't the best word here. In the US and the other 'five eyes' nations, it seems to me, agencies have a much broader scope than that. Things you say aren't strictly illegal (after all there's the first amendment, and similar laws in the other countries), but they are classed as threatening in other ways. Also, anything we say might not get us in trouble today, but since it's hard to predict what the future holds -- laws may become harsher for example --, it might indeed get us in trouble two or even five years from now, (possibly after it no longer represents our current opinions even) since it's all recorded.

About China I agree, and think they and other similar nations stayed competitive because they have where to 'borrow' innovation from (i.e. the freer nations). If we ever get to a place where the whole world is totalitarian/authoritarian this will stifle innovation everywhere.