hingisundhorsa

> still marvel at the OLPC XO-1, also derided as a toy but one of the most amazing computers ever built

Sorry, I was with you until the moment you described a pretty standard AMD Geode GX2 SoC with a pretty poor transflective LCD as "most amazing computer ever built". Let me guess, you worked with Nicholas? the self-promoting self-described father of web tablets who claimed to have saved millions of children when really he just chewed up millions of UNDP funds that could have gone towards genuinely life-changing projects?

> at least from a moral point of view I don't see that we did something wrong.

You did. You lied on your Thai tourist visa application form. It explicitly said: "I hereby declare that the purpose of my visit to thailand is for pleasure or transit only and that in no case shall I engage myself in any profession or occupation while in the country"

> No locals were out of a job

Could you explain how you formed that conclusion?

> They lived there as tourists so paid a lot more into the local economy than locals

How did you determine that? I've lived as a hippie in India, similar to what Steve Jobs did. I spent 0 money and lived off the temple welfare system. I was exploiting the generosity of people who had a thousandth the resources and welfare that I had. I wasn't alone. There were hundreds, if not thousands of other Westerners doing similar things.

"For a thousand years, China has been ruled by a cognitive meritocracy selected through the highly competitive imperial exams. The brightest young men became the scholar-officials who ruled the masses, amassed wealth, attracted multiple wives, and had more children."

Author manages to squeeze a topping of first semester Introduction to China with a thick crust of massive unsubstantiated overreach.

"hunting for sets of sets of IQ-predicting alleles. I know because I recently contributed my DNA to the project, not fully understanding the implications."

Nice autopraise, mildly disguised.

"After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness."

Seriously? There was an otherwise intelligent guy working for us who started spouting this kind of drivel. We noticed it all started after he got assigned a female manager and then subsequently a non-white manager. Some people have mild racial hangups, which they then externalize in odd ways like China peril.

I tried to find where in the article it says anything that might back up "already been convicted of being part of a terrorist cell". The closest I found is where it says: "already in jail for being part of a cell that considered attacking a Territorial Army base in the town.". This sounds a bit like a thought crime to a laymen like me and the verbiage flags my weasel alarm. Also, could you clarify where you're getting the term "nation's infrastructure" because all I saw was: "discussing attacking the town's TA headquarters". If we accuse everyone who's pissed off at the town council / home association and starts talking about blowing them up of terrorism, then we'll need a much bigger prison system.

We're all so easily swayed by propaganda to label someone "murderous thug". Odd how we never had a trial, never had concrete verifiable data and easily label them as such. We sweep those collateral casualties under the rug the same way the "barbaric" people we purport to be attempting to "civilize" do. I worry about us and our future.

Marketing was the example in the article. It is also one that catches my attention because I was aware of a case where my personal physician was pushing a particular drug and I was aware that pharma salesmen (marketeers) are permitted to encourage physicians to favor their products through controversial freebies like free trips to company seminars in the Bahamas, etc. I have no hate for marketing. If I had found a article contrasting how much is spent on legal versus R&D, I would have used that. And, by chance, yes, I do refuse to waste an extra dime on clothing just for a logo.

Sigh. I don't know whether you're being sarcastic. You're focusing on a country when we should be thinking about individuals. What I see is a population set that is currently excluded from survival due to the pricing of certain chemicals. This population set exists both in India and in our own backyard. There are 2 ways we can get access to a solution for that population set. One, allow generics to compete after a certain period. This tends to be natural, since reverse engineering a drug takes some time. During that time, big pharma can price the drug to maximize profit, after that, they have to compete better if they want to hold on to that profit.

As a “<insert ethnicity here> <insert gender here> <insert sexual orientation here> programmer”, I've always been uncomfortable with race based or gender based or orientation based policies. Google would have been better off taking the time evaluating each participant and then making a judgement on whether that person would benefit from additional help. That would be better for everyone rather than blindly assuming every female needs assistance or every "insert ethnicity here" needs assistance.

Uhm, perhaps my English is slipping but that just seems like a description of what they saw.