First of all, Europe is a huge continent with a very diverse population. Secondly people in every country have different levels of risk tolerance. Thirdly social class is not so big issue. Of course it depends on country for example Scandinavian and Central European countries don't have social class systems as much developed as in UK.
Ever since I exposed Spiegel for what is probably a self-serving PR move exploiting the Sony hack, I've had at least 4 stalker down voters. It's obvious because they tend to hit at the same time.
Not everyone who downvoted that (admittedly, not well-expressed, insofar as some thought I was accusing Spiegel of causing the Sony hack rather than simply benefitting from it) comment was a Speigeloid. The Spiegeloids are the ones who have been repeatedly downvoting random comments of mine just because I wrote them. (Or, an alternative explanation would be that the Hacker News community has suddenly become much meaner... but I doubt that.) In other words, stalker-downvoting (seeking out someone's comments and, without reading them, downvoting them).
I have no idea when it comes to their personal identities, but I know that I have at least 4 stalker-downvoters. They could be sock puppets of one person. For all I know, it could be Spiegel himself (but I doubt that).
That's because F# is a Microsoft language and by thus it is limited to .NET world.
But if we look at other ML languages such OCaml we can see that they're gaining popularity.
Although it sounds reasonable, I'm not sure whether this way of contacts/pedigree is needed everywhere. For example in (continental) Europe people are treated more equally, probably because majority of good universities are public.
The public universities in the U.S. are quite good as well. It's not about quality of education.
When a society is expanding, pre-existing social class matters little, because the focus is on the future rather than the past. When it's stagnant or contracting, like Silicon Valley, you see the importance of pedigree start to grow rapidly.
I think this comment on the article sums it up nicely:
"I have this feeling that Michael Booth was simply trying to respond to the highly selective, often fallacious Nordic image currently being peddled in the UK (with the Guardian as the worst offender) with an article employing the same kind of distortions. A rhetorical device, if you like."
