davidp · HackerTrans

The day-by-day dev log[0] is worth a read on its own. It's impressive what a single developer can do with the right determination and discipline.

[0]: https://github.com/a327ex/SNKRX/blob/master/devlog.md

davidp

7 lat temudiscuss

You're right that this is potentially anticompetitive, but

    “Companies will regulate themselves” is a cute libertarian bedtime story.

I've never heard libertarians say that. Rather, they say that consumers have the potential to regulate companies if they choose to do so, by voting with their feet. We should do so more often than we do; when there's a free market (monopolies are not free markets) it feels pretty good to tell a company to go screw themselves.

Personally I switched back to Firefox when Chrome tried to force login to my Google account, and I haven't missed a thing (other than some dev tools, e.g. websocket inspection). Firefox Quantum is really good, and their bookmark sync has replaced my previous usage of the now-defunct Xmarks.

davidp

7 lat temudiscuss

Superb video, and in the public domain. Thanks so much for the link!

davidp

7 lat temudiscuss

I certainly hope we don't.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and the press, including the freedom to make mistakes and even outright lie. There is no godlike authority that can tell truth from fiction without fail, and having government censors telling people what they can say (especially w.r.t. political speech) would invert the relationship between the people and their government, making government the master instead of the servant.

Instead, we rely on an educated readership to identify bias and mistakes and call them out, as has been done here. People get the journalism they deserve. To the extent we're failing to teach our children critical thinking skills, we're putting our democracy at risk.

The NY Times and other resources currently considered "credible" have earned that credibility from the people not through government permission but by generally providing a useful service to its consumers, despite all the mistakes they make and biases they present.

The NY Times in particular has unfortunately been burning through that hard-earned credibility capital at an alarming rate, even long before the current last few years, with the result that there are large portions of the country that no longer trust it like they did, with good reason. More recently they have taken the bait proffered by Trump and his ilk and lowered themselves to his level, spinning most articles I've seen with more political or oppositional bias than in the past.

I can only hope this is a cyclical phenomenon, where the citizenry/readership becomes ignorant of the related history and its challenges, simply because we've lived through a period where the battles were won and we could take such things for granted. Just like our predecessors, this generation is going to painfully relearn that everything printed (or typed) should be taken with a grain of salt and cross-checked against multiple sources.

davidp

8 lat temudiscuss

Seriously, switch to Firefox. It's good again, and prioritizes privacy.[0] After Chrome's forced-sign-in debacle [1] I switched away from Chrome on all my platforms (Windows, Linux, Android) and haven't missed a thing.

[0]: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18055161

davidp

8 lat temudiscuss

Nothing built on X does mixed DPI well, because X itself (in most configurations) treats multiple monitors as simple viewports onto a single screen. A single screen with multiple DPIs doesn't make sense virtually any more than it does physically.

Wayland is supposed to help with this, since it has a more modern take on screen virtualization (a la Windows or Mac). Getting all the user software to work on Wayland (via XWayland) is a nontrivial ongoing task. I'm not sure what Gnome Shell's state of affairs is w.r.t. Wayland, but I do know the ecosystem missed the boat with Ubuntu 18.04, which elected not to make Wayland the default due to stability and usability issues. So it might be a while before a major stable distro makes the move.

davidp

8 lat temudiscuss

  It's an improvement over writing csv files to disk.

This is not a high bar.

davidp

8 lat temudiscuss

This is not intended to contradict your point, but the first video is an obvious marketing fluff piece almost certainly funded by the Chinese government (China Daily is not an independent news source). It is designed to manipulate foreign opinion in favor of China and distract from their pollution problem. The video does not represent scientifically persuasive evidence in favor of your point.

"As we get closer, I can feel the temperature change. Here it's not just cool, it's actually a little cold."

Well no shit; those mountains you're strolling through peak at 7000 feet and higher [0].

[0] http://en-gb.topographic-map.com/places/Hebei-7042315/

davidp

8 lat temudiscuss

  They are hired by the agent

You can and absolutely should hire one yourself. Additionally, if you have a buyer's agent, don't make the mistake of using theirs either -- the buyer's agent has the same conflict of interest that the seller's does, despite the fact that in most cases they have a fiduciary responsibility to you, the buyer.

Another complication to be aware of: Inspectors can face "blackballing" by banks or realtors if they scuttle too many deals by finding bad things. If you find an independent inspector, don't balk at paying a little more -- they may need it to make up for business lost from being honest.

davidp

8 lat temudiscuss

These struggles sound much harder than what I've had to deal with; please accept my sympathy.

About the student debt: That's a lot of debt. I suspect you and many other millenials were lied to when you were told that getting that much student debt is normal and necessary, when it is in fact neither. For example it takes longer to graduate when the student alternates semesters of school and work, but it does get them through (especially if the school has a strong co-op program), without nearly as severe a crushing debt load. Second, the overall benefit of an education goes way beyond the differences between schools, i.e. for many careers an inexpensive school is just as good as an expensive one. (Counterpoint: if you want to be on the Supreme Court someday, you apparently have to go to Harvard Law School...)

I confess that I'm puzzled when I hear about such high debt numbers from new grads, and the main explanation I can think of for what's different now from when I came up is that people are systematically being told that any college debt is a good investment (and loans are freely granted on that basis), when it plainly is not (and they should not be).

davidp

8 lat temudiscuss

Agreed.

An expat is someone "on assignment", who has and expects strong ties with their home country. People who fit this description tend to frequently seek help from their own consulates, for example. It's particularly relevant for Americans because we tax ourselves even when overseas.

An emigrant (as seen from the source country) or immigrant (as seen from the destination country) is someone who has (usually permanently) moved and now expects primary services and sovereignty from their new home country.

I highly doubt that the distinction is strictly an anglophone concept, although perhaps it's related that they sound similar and have similar roots.

davidp

8 lat temudiscuss

Agreed. Pre-Wayland, Linux/X typically needs to treat all your screens as viewports onto a single virtual screen, which of course has to have a single DPI.

This is a more common use case than some folks might imagine. My laptop screen is HiDPI, but as soon as I plug into a projector or screen sharing device that acts as a second display, things get realllllly weird: Linux/X does not know how to dynamically change screen DPI without logout/login. I work around it by just running my laptop screen at "low" DPI. I don't miss it TBH; I suspect that many people who do notice it have better eyesight than me (possibly an age thing).

Wayland is supposed to help with this to some extent, but it's not yet ready for prime time.

davidp

8 lat temudiscuss

As simple as possible, but no simpler.

davidp

8 lat temudiscuss

> We didn’t need paywalls on the early web because we focused on plain text from other users. Plain text is easier to produce, lowering the friction for people to contribute, and it’s also cheaper to store and transmit, lowering the cost of bandwidth.

This is jarringly bad analysis that says more about TechCrunch's view of "content" than it does about anything else.

The cost of the "plain text" produced by the likes of true journalistic organizations like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, WaPo, et al comes from the salaries of the journalists and the resources needed to support them (travel, domestic bureaus, foreign bureaus, fees, etc.).

We didn't need paywalls on the early web because... well, maybe we did need them and we failed to build them or invest in alternatives: Look at what's happening to journalism.[0]

The author may have a point about there being an opportunity to streamline something, but if it doesn't result in money being directed to people creating the content that really matters (and honestly, people voting with their pocketbooks is the only rational way to choose just which content that is, unless you want someone else deciding for you), then it changes nothing.

Personally I'm happy to send subscription money to these organizations, at least, and grateful for the privilege to do so.

[0]: lmgtfy https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2...

davidp

8 lat temudiscuss

I like to trot out this old gem[1] when people wonder why there's so much hate for MySQL.

Nontransactional DDL alone is sufficient to classify it as a toy DB for me. Yes, I've been personally bitten by it.

[1]: https://grimoire.ca/mysql/choose-something-else

davidp

8 lat temudiscuss

You're mostly right, except that trees are now understood to not be a great way to sequester carbon: They eventually grow old and die, and the carbon in them is released as they rot. Over (non-geological) time trees are net carbon neutral.

davidp

8 lat temudiscuss

> he was a cool guy and I don't think he'd enforce the clause

The problem with that kind of trust is that sometimes the person who makes the decision isn't the cool guy. It can be the company's lawyers who decide to make your life hard after termination for whatever reason (reduces your negotiating leverage at least), or someone else entirely if the company is acquired (for example).

davidp

8 lat temudiscuss

That's the apparent paradox in the galaxy rotation curve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_rotation_curve

davidp

8 lat temudiscuss

I have a friend who is a linguistics professor at a major public university, and she has complained to me about some of the projects she's been involved with where her fellow researchers really are not good at math.

Among other things, there's a lot of confusion about statistical significance, and how and when it's calculated. There are people out there, especially in the cognitive and social sciences, who think it's OK to run an experiment to gather some data, and then look for statistically significant trends in the data and draw whatever conclusions they can. They're p-hacking and they don't even know they're doing it; they think it's science. And the people judging their papers sometimes think the same thing. How do you fix a field like this?

This issue lies at the root of the reproducibility problem. The example someone gave about an undergrad cheering (that she didn't have to do any more math) points at one of the causes.

davidp

8 lat temudiscuss

This light bulb is exactly why many people prefer statically-typed programming languages, especially above a certain codebase size/complexity and team size.

Make my tools do the grunt-work for me, thanks, so I can focus on the actual problem domain.

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