With a front page that has daily "Omg facebook is sharing your data", "you'll never guess what uber did now", "<random shit tech company> S-1", "let's all play armchair detectives and speculate why the 737 crashed", "shitcoin is good/bad for <whatever>", etc posts, I wouldn't exactly put HN that much above crappy content aggregator..
There are ads. The "<who cares> is hiring" ads, and I wouldn't be surprised if some content here that goes straight to the top isn't paid for somehow.. There's a large audience here, and no transparency in how the site operates, so the incentive is high.
And in a fun twist, what you mention is 99% of the reason for 99% of degree requirements on a position (yes, some positions truly do require years of specific background education) -- it's the best evidence a company has on an inexperienced person that the person can persevere.
This perspective on the bible and Latin is not a good analogy. Most people could not read any language long ago, and priests in general serve several other purposes before reading/expounding upon the bible. From the standpoint of a believer, the bible was not expanded by human decision as laws are (canonical vs. apocryphal discussions aside). The bible was compiled in Latin by Jerome because it was the common ('vulgar') language of the people.
Of course, there's plenty to discuss and argue about in all of the above, but your comparison makes it seem like a done deal.
I am probably even less worthy of offering a summary of the book than you are, but I'll take a stab as well.
The author is interested in how meaning can arise from meaningless components. For example, any one cell in the brain doesn't seem to have awareness, intelligence, etc. -- so why is it that a brain's worth does seem to have these abilities? To take it further, one could consider the constituent atoms and such.
There are analogies with music, visual art, and more subjects. How is it that a single musical note conveys so little, yet certain arrangements convey so much?
The author has a rough idea about how this happens. He thinks this event (meaning arising from meaningless parts) is the core scientific-philosophical question for developing strong AI.
Content hosting sites are supposed to host content. That's what they do. If a site doesn't work under unusual but not outrageous conditions, it's fundamentally broken and not fit for purpose.
The industry should be much less tolerant of excuses for tools and systems that perform poorly under load. It's had a couple of decades to get this right now. How is it acceptable that this is even a problem?
As an aside, I don't think "the most predatory thing" about student loans is the fixed cost regardless of profit. The same could be said of any business or real estate loan. The most predatory thing about student loans is that there's barely any rational qualification of the loan recipient.
Yea, you're right. I would say it's in part the disparity between the scale of the fixed cost and the amount of qualification that is predatory.
As in, if it was a loan for only $1000, it's certainly more ok to do less qualification. Versus if you were saddling a student with a loan of $40,000, you should probably be very careful.
There is some recent controversy surrounding Malta in the Catholic world. To dive into that rabbit hole: https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2017/01/a-note-on-sovereig...