In general natural languages are horrible but nevertheless working messes. They always change and each language is subtly different from each others, if not massively different.
For example: Korean verb conjugations are massive [1] mainly because conjugations themselves are morphemes (or semi-words, if you don't know what it is) and not mutations or transformations thus the set of conjugations is essentially open. Native Korean speakers can probably easily list hundreds of different conjugations with different meanings.
My seat-of-the-pants take (which I could qualify linguistically, but I think it's fine to posit these concepts colloquially in this context) on this: Most successful human languages provide a similar complexity space within which to express oneself richly.
You need to be able to communicate mood, underrun expectations, frame or defy relationships ... in English, much of this is done by choice of words (especially adjectives and verbs) and word arrangement. In Korean, instead, while there's a giant repertoire of nouns, sentiment and relationships are more often injected via choice of grammar form and word choice is rather more straight-forward.
For example, Westerners make much of Korean's various speech levels ("politeness") which need to be used correctly depending on age or standing of addressor and addressee, and mostly (but not solely) take the shape of different verb endings. But of course English has a complex register system as well - but it's done via word choice and arrangement instead. It's the difference between "I'm sorry, I'm not able to help" and "F*ck off". In Korean, you can conceivably scale this difference by leaving off a word ending aimed at the wrong person combined with body language.
It's this difference - human interaction and the nature of eloquence remain the same in their essence, but the tools of expression have different mechanics - that's fascinating.
In many languages conjugations are defined by the fixed template (the template itself can be large). In Korean, Japanese and other agglutinative languages the template is virtually non-existent (Wikipedia seems to give a 7-part template [1] which looks quite absurd for native Koreans---it should be considered a "common" regularizable subset of what people actually say).
eh.... haber isn't really "to be" at all. "to be" is pretty well covered by estar and ser. The only case for haber to translate to "to be" is existential, and pretty much only conjugated in the third person when used that way. Otherwise it's just an auxiliary verb, where its usage parallels "to have" in english (but not indicating possession, which is tener). It's basically just a glue verb.
A lot of the comments in this thread are missing the point. No one cares if you use Snapchat, no one cares if you like Snapchat. The question is how much market space can Snapchat occupy, and will their bets on new technology (VR, drones, etc) work out.
I think that tech companies are being expected to be vocal about politics (in this specific climate) because of all the rhetoric tech companies spew about "making the world a better place," agree with it or not.
You only need 51 votes. If Democrats really cared they could have just sit in the senate until the republican speakers collapsed. And it would have gotten to a vote.
It may have taken a couple of days but whatever.
Edit: Can anyone explain the downvotes please? A filibuster can be overcome by just siting and listening to the other side until they can no longer speak from exhaustion.
They can trade off speaking during the filibuster.
Say only 20 of the minority decide to be completely intransigent. How many weeks do you think it will take to exhaust them when they each only need to speak for ~9 hours a week to maintain the filibuster?
They don't have the right to leave the senate hall I think. So I do think they will have to make number one and two from time to time. The answer also is as much as needed.
What's your solution, then? What form of a left wing would have been any better than Obama in light of the obstruct-at-all-cost policy the Republicans held for the last 6 years?
>I do not agree with lots of things that (old) republicans did... but they get shit done. They wanted to block (stupid) gun control legislation, they did. They wanted to block returning Guantanamo prisoners to the USA, they did.
Blocking legislation (esp legislation brought forth by the opposition party) is, always has been, and always will be 100x easier than putting forth any legislation. Blocking legislation isn't getting anything done. We already see a failure to get things done by the Republicans in their handling of Obamacare-- they have no collective idea as to how to replace it, despite their vigor in denouncing and repealing the bill. They have had 6 years.
I can agree that blocking legislation is much, much easier than passing it.
On the other point, I lean Republican, and I'm more inclined to agree with 464192002d7fe1c. A lot of leftists love to blame the Republicans for being obstructionist during the Obama administration. But were you paying any attention to Obama's attitude? See [1]. He basically says "I won, deal with it, if you don't like it, then go win some elections". Well, they did, and they obstructed him in exactly the spirit that he invited. And in roughly the same spirit that the Democrats obstructed GWB during his term.
A good leader accepts the political situation and seeks to work within it. If your political opponents have control of Congress, you better learn how to compromise and work with them to get things done. This might actually involve not getting everything your way and sometimes doing something that the other side wants. Whining that you can't get the things that you want done is poor leadership.
I'll grant that there's a big divide between the two sides, and neither side is innocent in perpetuating it. But who can be the bigger person, lay off the name calling for a while, and make some compromises? Evidently not Obama. Maybe Trump will? I guess we'll see soon enough.
You're acting like the Republicans had no choice but to obstruct Obama. And when I say obstruct, I don't just mean denying legislation. I mean performing stunts like literally shutting down the government. Like irresponsibly fucking with the debt ceiling. Like attempting to repeal the ACA with no replacement plan, screwing over so many of their constituents. And let's not act like these were attempts to better America in light of differences of opinion on policy; the ACA was based on Republican health care initiatives for christ's sake.
Obama needed to be a better leader? Give me a goddamn break. Maybe he wasn't perfect, but in order for him to have done a better job unifying he would have had to bend over backwards to the GOP. There's a clear right and wrong in this situation.
Well no. They REDMAP'd it. That was impolite, so to speak: not technically illegal, but sufficiently unethical that in 2004 the Supreme Court basically said they'd ban it if only they had some consistent standard to apply.
This year they might have that consistent standard, and starting with North Carolina and Wisconsin, the permanent Republican Congressional majority might stop being so permanent.
In fact, every single politician who utters the phrase "permanent majority", with or without a party name in the middle, should be jailed. A democracy never has a permanent majority, or else it ceases to be a democracy.
> the permanent Republican Congressional majority might stop being so permanent.
> In fact, every single politician who utters the phrase "permanent majority", with or without a party name in the middle, should be jailed. A democracy never has a permanent majority, or else it ceases to be a democracy.
The GOP has controlled the House for only six years running. Before that, the Democrats controlled it for four - before that, the GOP controlled it for six, and before that, the Democrats controlled it for 61 years, with the exception of one term (1947, under Truman). During the vast majority of that time, the Senate was also under Democratic control as well, although the Senate has leaned slightly more right than the House fairly consistently ever since the Seventeenth Amendment was passed.
I agree that a democratic system should not be controlled by a single party, but it's rather silly to say that the GOP has a "permanent Congressional majority" given how recent their majority is.
>What form of a left wing would have been any better than Obama in light of the obstruct-at-all-cost policy the Republicans held for the last 6 years?
Greater judicial opposition to the REDMAP gerrymandering program that, starting in 2010, helped to guarantee Republicans the consistent seats in Congress and state-houses that they needed to obstruct Democratic measures.
The Republicans do have plenty of voters, probably "too many" if you're a Democrat, but there was no historical necessity for them to have a chokehold on Congress until 2020.
Don't think any concrete evidence exists, but the fact that the politicians (across the aisle) that were briefed on the hackings are universally accepting that Russia hacked the DNC is pretty good indication that the claims are true. Well, either that or there's a huge conspiracy going on, or gross incompetence.
Are we sure that VR in its current form (headset ala Oculus) is the form of VR that will become ubiquitous? I find it hard to believe that the average consumer will be interested in buying that clunky, expensive piece of hardware just for the "coolness" of it.
If VR is to become popularized i feel like it needs to be more seamlessly integrated into our daily lives.
Serious question: why is this sort of diversity important? As an Asian American man, I can't help but feel slighted when reading articles like this. Why is my status as an Asian any different from other minorities? Why even take race and gender into account in the hiring process for ENGINEERING roles?
As a minority I fully understand how race can affect one's perception on oneself, and how societal pressures can make one feel like they don't belong in a certain field. But in this light, shouldn't companies focus more on encouraging women and URM to enter in the field of engineering, and not at the point of hiring? CMV.
For the last bit this is a very commonly talked about idea, often referred to as "the pipeline problem". There is evidence that the level of which minorities graduate with CS degrees outpaces hiring though, suggesting that the pipeline can't be blamed alone.
The first part about why diversity is important has been covered ad nauseum so you can find those arguments and agree with them or not.
With that said, their survey includes companies across all industries, including those with a lot of customer face-to-face interactions (retail, banking, airlines, hospitality, healthcare). I am not aware of anyone narrowing down the research to tech/engineering field, so in absence of that the public just assumes that similar findings would apply to every industry, and diverse high-tech companies will outperform non-diverse ones.
Maybe you're misunderstanding these policies. Not only do these companies often discuss the pipeline problem publicly (and sometimes offer corporate support to address it), but as rhcom2 pointed out, it's not the only factor.
If it's not the only factor, then there's a chance diverse candidates simply aren't being reached by the typical recruiter strategy. So companies take that hypothesis and incentivize recruiters to diversify their search. Only time will tell if that hypothesis is correct, and this is the only point in the system where race/gender are under consideration. It has no impact on those that apply to FB through a college career fair, or through facebook.com/careers.
