"Better die and spawn a ghost, than die and leave nothing." What's the point of a ghost? How does this make your situation "better"? Your point is based on the assumption that death is inherently "bad".
Darwinism suggests that if ghosts can continue to exist (and reproduce?) and affect the world to create more of themselves (e.g. tell people that it's not so bad), then they will be selected-for.
Ceasing to exist is, in a strict Darwinian sense, bad. Reproduction and, to an extent, continued existence are good.
Seconded. It should be noted that some people see making children as a form of immortality. My own mom thinks along the lines of "what's the point of living forever, you just have to make children".
I say the immortality of my genes pale in comparison to the immortality of my thought processes. Even if the copy isn't really "me", it will have the same influence I could have had if it was. I may have other goals besides not dying. My ghost would have at least a chance of carrying them out.
Creating that web of connections online and offline is highly valuable to a company. The more loyalty you have the better. The online world should help reinforce offline relationships. The internet is, after all, a tool.
Immigration laws are ridiculous. If they can create a successful business that can give jobs to many, why would you not support that? I think the government really needs an overhaul on how they think of small business and entrepreneurs. They are what keep this country afloat. You simply can not create a mega-corporation that employs hundreds if not thousands out of thin air. It starts as a small business (or, more commonly for us here, a startup).
The big problem, I think, is that they know this and it's precisely why it's happening. Lobbying by mega-corps is very detrimental to our economy. Which in turn effects social issues. Thus an all encompassing negative outcome.
Make better software. Hackers are what drive innovation. I for one support this mans use of "supercookies". Law is not the answer for everything. We can fix things through advancement of technology not additional (pointless) legislature.
Easier said than done. You can create a "cookie" by simply sending a unique image to a users browser with a long cache time, and then reading that back with JavaScript on each page.
If you disable your browsers cache and/or JavaScript, I guess that would fix this particular issue.
If you want to keep both the cache, and JavaScript, then you need to stop people from doing this sort of thing, with legislation.
Explain why what I said is ridiculous, or I'll discard your comment as nonsense.
If we don't have a technical solution for a problem (which we don't in this case), then regulation is appropriate. If and when we find a technical solution for this problem, then the legislation will be deprecated. Until that point, it is useful.
What is "ridiculous", is assuming that all problems have technical solutions.
Therapy? What about a close friend? Relative? Hell, even just pausing a moment to self reflect is better than therapy. Use community before you seek "professionals".
Why tell someone who has just posted a self-reflective essay to the internet to... Self-reflect and share the problem with non-professionals? They're evidently trying that already.
In the general case it is a poor idea to refer people to their own families. This is sometimes hard for those of us with happy and supportive families to remember, but a lot of folks have problems that are caused by their families. And remember that seeing more of the people one is already seeing may not be a cure for depression. To fix depression you have to change something.
As for why pros are useful, in any field: They have likely seen thousands of people with your problem; they know a larger list of things to try; they know how to start out with the cheap and simple options but are also aware of how to escalate and have experience with escalation and know the consequences of non-escalation; they aren't involved in your life and can therefore act more freely and with fewer conflicts of interest; they have access to important tools that non-pros do not (in the case of mental health professionals this includes drugs, like the drugs that have improved the lives of so many people I know); they take the problem seriously; merely visiting one will help you confront your problem (the twelve-step programs aren't just being glib: admitting you have a problem really is the first step - once you take conscious, subconscious, and social ownership of a problem it's amazing how often you can fix it yourself).
And, most important of all, in the mental health field pros are not on the effing Internet. They are morally, professionally, and legally compelled to avoid publicly talking about you, or talking to your friends, or even being in the same room with you outside of therapy. The same cannot be said of your friends or family, let alone of random jerks like myself on Hacker News.
Now, having delivered the most epic disclaimer in HN history, I'll point out that the commenter above (unlike the person who wrote the submitted blog post) evidently knows the cause of his or her own distress; it is sitting there in the comment in black and white. Brainstorming what to do about it might be better done by a discreet, independent observer who is actually on the scene, however.
Welcome to the club (read: life). How do you mature? Learn to spot these issues before they happen. Learn to change when you need to change, not when you have to change. Look inside. Reflect on the things you do. You know you the best-- you can analyze you the best. I guarantee you will be amazed at how much you can learn by just sitting quietly on the floor for 30 minutes doing nothing. Eyes closed. More commonly understood as meditation.
I would bet you have more of a handle on things than many. Understand that you are young and nothing, I repeat, nothing can substitute for experience. And when you make sure to learn from every experience you have by utilizing self reflection, well, you will understand life and it's bliss.
If anyone tells you life and the journey it provides is easy, they are lying. If anyone tells you it sucks, they are lying.
I'd add that it's important to know when you need to break out into internal APIs. It means nothing to do it just because you want to and think you'll get more out of it. Measure the benefit. There are many refactoring techniques to kill app bottlenecks well before it's time to create an internal API.
