kinsho

You know, you could have ended your post by the end of the third paragraph and everything would have been fine. Your post would have been one's honest opinion about a particular cuisine, that's all. Even though I sincerely disagree with you (being an Indian man born and raised on Indian-style cooking) but at least I'd respect your opinion.

Then you treated your dislike of Indian food as some sort of objective statement, alleging most non-Indian folk like it only because of political wokeness. You illustrated that point by bringing up your sous chef's love of Indian food, despite this weird idea that his Aryan physical features should have marred his palette for life when it comes to food rich in spices.

There's some troubling racial undertones peppered throughout your post, let alone some serious notes of snobbery. Honestly, you seem like a bright guy, so I hope you take this moment to do some seriously deep introspection here. As it stands right now, it seems to me you harbor some old-fashioned beliefs regarding non-white people that are just factually wrong.

The WTFs

That's for assault weaponry.

Honestly scary stuff. I can see a good number of middle-aged women be very receptive to the fake information being disseminated on Pinterest, so long as they think that such information just "organically" appeared in their home feeds.

Regarding your third point....are you sure about that? I feel that many people do want to share the interesting moments (more or less) of their life online. If this wasn't true, Instagram wouldn't be such a popular platform and a threat to Snapchat.

That being said, I'm bearish on Snapchat, at least in the short term. I don't see much opportunity for growth, not unless it manages to capture the hearts and minds of the next budding wave of teens.

Sad to see some people here be upset at the harmless mention of a subject's race. Though it is proof positive to me that even a community as dedicated towards intellectual pursuits like Hacker News has its fair share of regressive elements as well.

The bulk of Wii games can be played from your couch.

New solutions appear quite a great deal more than you would think, thanks in no small part to scholars, inventors, and visionaries. Whether these solutions are viable for the marketplace are a whole different question, but these solutions can (and have often) popped up without any financial incentive driving the creators.

So no, new solutions do not only appear when a market incentive is there. If anything, the market's role is better described as determining whether to drive the mass-production of these solutions.

On a tangential note, innovation and free markets may have little more than a relationship by happenstance now that I think about it.

And to your point regarding sales and marketing, this is exactly what I meant when I talk about not coddling stupid people. If stupid people are driven to buy a product because a particular celebrity endorses it, let them waste their money on that crap. Honestly, the government could only do so much to baby-proof the world for the stupid people. I am a big believer in the notion that government should only intervene against this idiocy when such behavior negatively impacts the rest of society (see chain smokers and the cost they incur on our health care system).

And nobody here is condoning this notion that companies be allowed to openly lie and deceive consumers. I'm not quite sure where this information asymmetry aspect you bring up is coming from. Free markets require an informed citizenry to perform efficiently.

This is an asinine argument. We live in a globalized world. You could perhaps make this argument if you were living in a closed society like North Korea.

Besides that, you're missing something important about the idea of a free market. Whenever a problem or an issue arises, eventually somebody somewhere will introduce a product or solution that addresses that problem. If the problem is seen as troubling for a significant number of people, enough people will buy that solution/product, which will incentivize more suppliers/producers provide even more of such solutions and products.

Basic economics. No need to write regulation to force companies to build functionality that people do not even want or care much about in the first place. If people are too stupid to look out for themselves, let them be punished for the consequences of their stupidity.

Good points.

Ah the Wired article presents your case in a much better light. If the software in the tractor prevent you from replacing a broken mechanical part, then that can lead to the law blocking you from literally repairing any part of your tractor.

My experience in code bloat seems to tell me that it comes primarily from good intentions that fail to pan out as intended.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions....

Yes, but it's NOT the -only- part of the tractor. The commenter who brought up this tractor example made it seem like the government outlawed people from tinkering or repairing ANY part of the tractor.

I also wouldn't be surprised if (much like cars), tractors generally only need mechanical repairs over the duration of their lifespans.

> And a lot of armchair commentators seems to underplay the amount of sheer engineering effort or cost involved in these sorts of things - it's not a case of spinning up some AWS instances, and hacking together some PHP on your weekend and deploying.

I see this all the time with people that know zilch about technology, but it really disappoints me when I even see my fellow technologists underestimate the amount of engineering effort it takes to get something simple like a server up and running reliably.

You're misrepresenting your case here. The law stops you from tinkering with the software of the tractor. You can tweak, repair, replace, or light on fire any part of the tractor you want, so long as you do not reverse-engineer the software inside the tractor. So technically, the law does not stop you from repairing any of the mechanical parts of your tractor.

I'm not saying I agree with John Deere's attempt to prevent people from playing around with its tractor software, but I am saying that you're exaggerating here.