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Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#231

Post by andrewwhartion »

germinalphrase wrote: post #157
basch wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education and News are two sides of the same coin. At some point the majority of the adult population makes the decision to learn about the world from entertainment companies. We should reanalyze what news and continuing education mean, relative to each other. https://theconversation.com/ and http://www.worldcrunch.com/ make good starts, as do aggregators like http://www.aldaily.com/ and https://redef.com/ As far as…

As a teacher, I would kill for a collaborative curriculum and assessment tool. A "backend" service for creating, managing, and personalizing curriculum materials would go a long way to mitigate the absolutely astounding amount of redundant labor that goes on in schools ( you're really creating a comprehension quiz for To Kill a Mockingbird from scratch? ). Contrary to popular belief - even here on HN - teachers are c…

I think there's massive scope for improving the delivery of educational material, but most of my ideas have been related to later secondary education and university and to what I as a learner have wanted, not what the teacher/educator has wanted.

It's been an open question for me how to improve education in earlier years where there's probably less scope for self-learning, and more focus should be on how to improve the teachers' efficiency and effectiveness. Since my own kids are starting school now, these earlier years have taken on new significance, but since I don't have a background in education, I haven't known where to start. I'm more at the point of "How can I help?!", since I have very little visibility into the frustrations that teachers experience on a day-to-day basis, but I can build software, if software can be part of the solution.

Sent you an email, but I'm sure there are others who would love to be involved in the discussion...

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#232

Post by ryanSrich »

whistlerbrk wrote: post #214

I have a startup idea I've been working on for quite a while, that I stopped when I realized I needed to reexamine the technology from the ground up. I've since learned a lot which will allow me to proceed -- this election and mainly the political climate has me wishing I could work on it full time and I would absolutely love to apply. Should I apply late or wait for the next funding cycle?

YC is more than halfway through the Winter batch. Start working on your company now and you'll be in good shape to apply for the Summer batch.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#233

Post by dragonwriter »

dukeluke wrote: post #226
pklausler wrote: post #202

Democracy in the US sounds like a great idea. Republicans have won exactly one of the past 7 Presidential elections (viz. 2004) but took power in two more thanks to the Electoral College.

The electoral college was designed so the highly populated states don't have too much leverage over the rest of the country, and worked as was intended. There are many areas of the country seeing a declining quality of life, and those areas happened to vote for the candidate who spoke of economic issues more.

The electoral college was designed so that slave states, who got extra seats in the House compared to their population of citizens through the 3/5 compromise, would have Presidential electoral power proportional to the degree to which they were overrepresented in Congress, rather than in line with their number of voting citizens. It is designed as a positive reward for the remaining enfranchised population for disenfranchising a portion of the population counted for apportionment.

It is, indeed, working as intended, the problem is that the intent was ill from the beginning.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#234

Post by anonimus17 »

grzm wrote: post #159
anonimus17 wrote: post #151

I applied to Y combinator with an app that addressed both points raised under news section three years ago and didn't get accepted. Back then we were facing the same issues in Turkey. Ultimately, we had to close down the site because Turkish government was silencing every opposing voice. Funny how you guys are now thinking this is a big issue NOW.

Funny how you guys are now thinking this is a big issue NOW. How is this sentiment useful? Sorry, guys. Whatever you do now is invalidated by what you didn't do before. The past is only useful as something we can learn from. Focussing on what can be done now is something we can actually grapple with, change, and improve.

That is your interpretation of my comment. Notice how you are twisting it with the "Sorry, guys".

I support YC's effort. After all, I spent many hours of my life on solving this very problem through my non-profit startup.

Fake news has been a big problem for a long time for many countries. It would have been great if YC took an action before it became USA's problem. Think about the impact they could have made! I guess hindsight is 20/20.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#235

Post by [deleted] »

thowar2 wrote: post #34

Education should be on this list. The root of all these problems stem from a lack of effective education. 1) The current methods are highly ineffective for teaching By getting more effective at teaching children, and helping them to self educate, we get better informed citizens who can interpret news more accurately and effectively participate in democracy. 2) The current goals for education do not align with current…

[deleted]

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#236

Post by clavalle »

eevilspock wrote: post #112
rjkaplan wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on how you define progress. Just to play devil's advocate: what if you define progress as "that stuff" that will increase the general well-being of the greatest number of people over the next 20 years? With that definition, does technology-powered automation still count as progress?

It would count as progress if the automated means of production were owned by the labor that is put out of work. Oh wait, that sounds like communism, and we could never ever have a reasonable discussion about that amongst a group of people who thrive off of a system that is the opposite.

Communism seems like an idea from the 19th century shoehorned onto economic discussions in the modern age.

Is it really necessary that the means of production be owned by the labor put out of work? Or is the real problem not inequality (which has some very nice incentivizing benefits) but desperation at the lower end of the economic scale which lead to extortion like transactions? And if that is the case, is a full scale distribution of wealth necessary or can we have the best of both worlds by redistributing just enough wealth to guarantee that everyone has their survival needs taken care of?

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#237

Post by onion2k »

conanbatt wrote: post #194
DougN7 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've rewritten my comment three times so far ... My wife and I are fortunate enough that she can be a stay at home mom. I grew up the same way. Were middle class, though increasingly probably slightly mid to upper these days. We don't need the babysitter, and want our kids to be educated, so that is the focus. We help them with homework, etc. We're lucky. So from my perspective, having both parents working is the roo…

Babysitting a single child is economically very inefficient. Its something teenage girls can do while they watch tv. A full grown adult with skills is worth considerably more to society working than babysitting. Its not an economic necessity that both parents work, the incentive to do it is extremely large and probably pure conservatism had been keeping it at bay, if at all.

Being a parent is not babysitting.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#238

Post by eplanit »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #35
alva wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"a ban on travelers from majority Muslim countries by a president who has promised his supporters a ban on Muslims" would that still be misleading? That would be a very accurate summary. Not misleading in the slightest. >" And if opponents of the ban called it a "Muslim ban", would media outlets be allowed to report on that fact?" Absolutely, but it should not be presented as fact that "Donald Trump has enacted a Mu…

One minor nit. "A ban on travelers from certain majority Muslim countries..." would be accurate. As written, it implies every majority Muslim country is affected, which is not true. Of course, the more clarifications you add, the less it reads like a headline...

Exactly -- and this is a distinction that journalistic integrity is supposed to clarify. According to Wikipedia there are at least 22 majority Muslim countries[1]. If this were a "Muslim Ban", then much more than 7 (one third) would be listed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_world#Countries_with_th...

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#239

Post by literallycancer »

3825 wrote: post #196
Kluny wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. And some men want to be stay at home dads, and sometimes both parents want to work, and sometimes there's a single parent who's falling apart trying to do everything. I wish we could agree that all those choices are valid, and allow some social safety nets that make it possible.

> I agree. And some men want to be stay at home dads, and sometimes both parents want to work, and sometimes there's a single parent who's falling apart trying to do everything. I wish we could agree that all those choices are valid, and allow some social safety nets that make it possible. I think it goes back to what you said first. We need to agree on some core values. I don't want any more of my money going to peo…

>"children belong to the collective"

I grew up in post-communist Europe. In the past, we had state propaganda that told children to turn in their parents[1], among other wonderful products of that line of thinking. So I'd be very careful with ideas like this one. (I still support mandatory vaccinations and/or sane defaults.)

>Lets send a clear message: If your children are your own and do not belong to the society, then you can raise them by yourself. If you can't afford to do so, we'll simply put you in a debtor's prison.

This would undo a lot of progress that has been made on the human rights front in the past century.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlik_Morozov

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#240

Post by anonimus17 »

lebanon_tn wrote: post #164
anonimus17 wrote: post #151

I applied to Y combinator with an app that addressed both points raised under news section three years ago and didn't get accepted. Back then we were facing the same issues in Turkey. Ultimately, we had to close down the site because Turkish government was silencing every opposing voice. Funny how you guys are now thinking this is a big issue NOW.

Maybe the problem being addressed wasn't the reason for rejection.

That was probably the case with my application. They are smart investors.

In the big picture, my application is insignificant compared to the problem. I am questioning the reactive behavior.

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