David Brooks is not a good writer, yet he has a column in the NYT. Meritocracy. The end.

Strong disagree on that. Reddit has bots and a massive troll population, neither is present in such a way that affects user experience.

Not sure why this comment is gray, it’s informative. Sounds like a similar situation to Notch who worked on Minecraft.

Enjoying reading the content on your site - Mixcloud is a platform I use and the backend breakdown is really interesting.

Yeah, the backend interviews are something I'd really like to do more of. Glad you're enjoying it!

Totally possible. https://youtu.be/0o_9CHYeRvI

Make it play the Spongebob theme and you’re set.

Oddly enough kids are using GDocs for messaging in school and during study sessions, etc. Not something to build a network around since they are used as ephemeral ad hoc chat spaces.

GDocs gets used because it's not blocked/censored by the school's IT.

Or you could mind your own business about something that doesn’t affect you at all.

Fine, but asking me to change natural speech patterns does affect me, so please don't ask me to do it.

Must be extremely difficult to be a programmer who is unwilling to adapt to changes in language usage.

This post about Cheetos seems to have attracted a lot of complaints about imaginary leftists and ideological bubbles. Very odd.

Not odd so much as remarkable.

How does a story about a minority janitor who started at the literal bottom, get turned into a grievance thread about the damage done by "diversity hiring" policies?

HN seems to have a small subset of vocal critics who echo the ideology of edgy YouTube pundits. Maybe they align with being fans of Cheetos and other gamer culture commodities?

There’s another offshoot discussion on this thread about how “Latinx” is a ‘white academia term’ and therefore it’s racist. Yet another about gender fluid pronouns and how using preferred pronouns is a burden some are unwilling to accommodate. It has to be the Cheetos.

You're right, there is a segment of HN that has these opinions, but it goes beyond that crowd. I'm a big fan of Dilbert for example, and was excited to read Scott Adams' (the cartoonist) autobiography.

In one of the first chapters, he himself talks about how he missed out on some promotion at the bank he worked for because "upper management wanted diversity". Very little detail is provided about this policy, so we have to take him at his word.

While I don't really question his interpretation of events, I have to wonder about this unicorn bank that was promoting minorities wholesale over white males in the 1980s.

It's a pretty standard alt-right tactic online. When the topic at hand doesn't suit their worldview, manufacture inflammatory content until it does.

Some people think that the American dream should only be for "Americans" ie not minorities

I’m with you on this... guess that makes me a pessimist.

International studies major, long ago. This article is fascinating.