Google: "But he left behind a whole new generation of programmers, an entire school. And it sets the level of ethical standards for all of us." vs Yandex: "But he left behind a whole new generation of programmers, a whole school. And its ethical standards specified the level of all of us."
Google: "Tonight, he was gone." vs Yandex "Tonight he was not."
And RIP Ilya. Many people who knew him said he was a very good person. He didn't spoke in public often, did his work, supported charity and also had an active political stance. What a loss.
Ilya was very vocal about his contempt for falsifications in Russian elections. He went to protests and helped develop an app for election observers. This app helped volunteers submit proofs of violations during the elections.
This sounds defamatory to his colleagues. Most of whom also watched those elections and participate in political activities. It's just that Ilya was the most brightly burning among them all.
He obviously had a huge heart for these innocents. The average outlook for orphans in Russia who are not adopted is bleak, with many ending up in prison or dead within a few years after being released into society at age 16 or so.
Due to entirely unrelated political forces, the US is banned from adopting them for now, with no change in sight. There are many children throughout the world dreaming of having parents some day.
I suggest to all, when you make your hacker fortune, buy one fewer of your favorite cars and adopt an orphan if you have a heart for children.
Such an incredible person. I've met him a couple of times, and he was always smiling, inquisitive and much nicer than you would ever expect. The good go early.
Go out there and live the day, hug your loved ones, enjoy the sun, work hard, don't think about taking over the world and being the next Steve Jobs, stay humble, you're given one life - go out there and make life proud that you are a part of it.
While platitudes generally go over well on hacker news, I'm curious how one can "make life proud that you are a part of it." Should one also try to "make time notice that you exist" or "make gravity work for it?"
I intend to give all these a go by buying a self winding watch and hopping to work everyday and remembering to take a moment to wish everyone I pass a good day and good health.
10:50 status: left home 3 hours ago, almost at the train station to go to work. number of times maced: 1. number of children hurriedly pulled away from me: 7.
Until today, I had never heard of Yandex. I do have to say that their search quality appears to be very high, and I may use them as a Google alternate in the future. Is there any specific reason why they don't have much traction in the US?
Yandex specializes mostly on Russian-speaking countries and neighbours like Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan. Recently Turkey.
AFAIK, they never tried to market the service in the US.
Maybe none of these guys would have done what they've done.
Maybe they'd never even have been born, their parents being to lazy.
Maybe we'd never have evolved from being pretty comfortable monkeys sitting around - why would we have evolved to breed, to love sex, and to make babies at all? Babies are just competition to an immortal being.
Bottom line is, none of us would be around to mourn the passing of an apparently very nice person. RIP Ilya.
> Maybe we'd never have evolved from being pretty comfortable monkeys sitting around - why would we have evolved to breed, to love sex, and to make babies at all?
But we are here now, and we don't want to die. Death might have been useful in the past, but now it's the high time for it to go away.
You could asses any natural disaster or mass genocide with the same "maybe" logic. I don't know you, but I doubt you applied the same framework to September 11th or the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004. These events are objectively tragic, as is the death of Ilya.
I think yes, maybe much more. If you could plan for hundred years in the future, not for few decades, if you could realistically hope you have so much amazing things to see and do in front of you... I'd say it's much more motivating than knowing you already lived (for most of us here) 1/3 or 1/2 of your life, and things will soon start to get worse for you.
While i don't know about this guy specifically, Russia has high rate of smoking. Coincidentally, several prominent Russian people i've checked out about recently happened to had died from stomach cancer relatively young.
Apparently, Russia is the 4th most smoking country in the world, behind Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece [1].
"According to a survey reported in 2010 by Russia’s Health and Social Development Ministry, 43.9 million adults in Russia are smokers. Among Russians aged 19 to 44 years, 7 in 10 men smoke and 4 in 10 women smoke." [2]
Just to be clear: I'm not implying that smoking, drinking, or eating salty food was the cause of his stomach cancer, I'm just generalizing based on stereotypes that I know.
And of course, you know this because you're one of Ilya's doctors. And also because you have diagnostic skills that the world has never experienced before.
Well, yes, there is a strong correlation between alcohol consumption and cancer rates. I am not sure if it was ever tested on animals to prove that it directly leads to cancer, but in observational studies this is often pointed out as a culprit for high cancer rates.
Ethanol is classified by the WHO and the American Cancer Society (and others) as a carcinogen, in the same group as asbestos, hepatitis and plutonium.
That doesn't mean it's "equally carcinogenic" as those others...just that our knowledge of its carcinogenic properties are similarly confident. It's definitely a carcinogen.
I believe they did have proof that some Asians don't have the gene which helps break down alcohol, and those that had that gene were at a higher risk of cancer if they drank alcohol. No, I guess it isn't definitive proof though. Still, Russia is on the Asian continent, so this theory holds water.
I would take whatever is written by the American Cancer Society with a grain of salt. They have also a political agenda, since they recommend "children and teens" not to consume alcohol at all, even though there is no study or data to support that claim. In most countries around the world, teens and even children drink alcohol early in their lives without notable health effect on the long run as long as their consumption remains reasonable.
Besides, their claim on "There are many ways of reducing heart disease risk, including avoiding smoking, eating a diet low in saturated and trans fats, staying at a healthy weight, staying physically active, and controlling blood pressure and cholesterol." is only partially true and just reflects the current thinking of specialists. The evidence on LDL/HDL levels is not very compelling and there was a post very recently on HN from a surgeon claiming heart disease was rather linked to tissue inflammation than cholesterol.
> there was a post very recently on HN from a surgeon claiming heart disease was rather linked to tissue inflammation than cholesterol
I believe the "surgeon" you referred to is Dwight Lundell. His claim is just that, a claim. Suffice to note that he has his medical license revoked because of "unprofessional conduct":
That means their recommendation reflects the current medical consensus. Of course American Cancer Society is going to make their recommendations based on current medical consensus instead of some wild claim made by someone who has his medical license revoked. To do anything else would be irresponsible.
Is there the slightest evidence he was, other than 'some other guy in Russia was murdered with polonium once'?
You already know that the person who claims an extremely rare event occurred is the person who has to show up with the evidence. Without any evidence, why go around making this sort of inflammatory comment about a very sad event?
Quite fittingly, the Yandex translation is superior to the Google translate version:
http://translate.yandex.net/tr-url/en+ru.en/clubs.ya.ru/comp...
1: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57442907-71/russias-zucker...