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3minus1

750 karma · joined March 17, 2011

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3minus1··on Bomb fishing is wreaking havoc on Indonesia's coral reefs
According to the article these fish are sold locally, with obvious damage from the blasts to their internal organs. So it's not the reason fish is cheap in Western countries. AFAIK cheap fish mostly comes from farms.
3minus1··on Ask HN: What's the point in creating a startup when anyone can copy it in days?
> With those odds populations cant have everyone taking risk. Such populations sooner or later go extinct.

Not trying to be a jerk, but there is a logical fallacy here. If you've ever read the Selfish Gene the central idea is that there is a common misunderstanding that animals/societies evolve for "the good of the population". A population is better understood as a collection of individuals with each being a collection of genes, and really it is each gene that is trying to replicate itself. Applying it to your example, a risk-taking gene with .998% chance of failure would probably not replicate itself successfully, unless the .002% of individuals that succeed were quite prolific at procreation. The good of the population does not really come into it.

3minus1··on Ask HN: What makes someone hate their job?
A really bad colleague can make a job miserable. I slightly bad manager can also make it suck.
3minus1··on The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything
Most people automate things just barely enough to work. The thing is, having a barely working script or process can save someone thousands of hours. It's actually hugely valuable. Trying to make it more robust/productionized/whatever may have diminishing returns.
3minus1··on Ask HN: What made your favorite manager so great?
Some of my favorite qualities in various managers:

  - Deep technical knowledge. Someone you can respect as a fellow engineer.
  - Really loud and forceful in meetings. Someone who can represent your work well to a team of other managers
  - A good friend
  - Super honest and transparent
  - Combination of deep technical knowledge and passion/involvement in the team's mission. This was my favorite because I felt the manager could truly appreciate the work I did.
3minus1··on But what if I want a faster horse?
I really don't think bad Product Manager's is a good explanation for the UI. Any big company like Netflix is going to heavily A/B test any and every change to the UI. They will only ever add things that boost metrics like engagement. You may not like the UI; it may annoy you, but you should have some appreciation for the fact that they are using sophisticated techniques to optimize for what they care about.
3minus1··on A look at the creative process behind Bluey and Cocomelon (2024)
There's this video called 1 to 30 song
3minus1··on A look at the creative process behind Bluey and Cocomelon (2024)
As a morning parent of a toddler, part of the morning routine is playing a toddler exercise video. It's funny, my initial thinking was to burn some of the toddler's energy before sitting down to breakfast, but at this point it's definitely more for me. Sometimes the toddler even complains but I've come to really enjoy doing some stretches in the morning.
3minus1··on TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday
> There's a reason people pay for Netflix despite pirating proposing a higher level of quality; Netflix is just easier

I'm slightly annoyed how this comment completely ignores the moral and ethical reasons someone might want to avoid making an illegal copy of something while denying it's creators any compensation. I need more coffee.

3minus1··on Ask HN: Recruiters, how many hours after a job posting is too late to apply?
> If you are serious about finding a job, you HAVE to rely on your network

This is not a hard rule. My last 4 jobs I got without a network connection, and I work at a large, well-known company now.

3minus1··on Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
This reminds me of when cities in the Bay Area started considering restrictions on free meals at work, because local restaurants were annoyed it reduced their lunch crowd. I'm sure that same group has a vested interest in people commuting to jobs.
3minus1··on Ask HN: Which movies did you watch multiple times?
LOTR The Matrix Gladiator No Country for Old Men QT: Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs PT Anderson: Boogie nights, Magnolia, There will be Blood Fight Club Nolan: Memento, Batman Galaxy Quest Dumb and dumber Jurassic Park Terminator 2 Princess Bride Star Wars OT Indiana Jones 1 & 3 Office Space
3minus1··on Ask HN: Returning to tech after 4 years?
Your degree and work experience are huge assets, and it would be wise to leverage them. It's too bad that you got burned on your first job, but there are huge differences across jobs. If you don't like learning new tech you can find many jobs where it's not required (government and bigger companies). Even if you decide you don't want to do coding, you can leverage your education, experience, and tenure at a company into adjacent roles (product manager, manager, business intelligence, DBA, QA, etc.).
3minus1··on The fishy death of Red Lobster
> The thing about a restaurant is that you'll always have business if the food and service are good.

This is just demonstrably false. Good food and service is no guarantee of product-market fit.

3minus1··on This is a teenager
As others have mentioned this site heavily implies causality with statements like "we can clearly see that the experiences of their childhood had a huge effect" and "college or technical school can mitigate some of the effects of adverse childhood experiences". It is simply not possible to draw such conclusions from a longitudinal study. Interventions and actual experiments are necessary.

The site is really nicely done and even moving, but I find the ideas it is putting forth harmful honestly. We all would like to see better outcomes for teenagers, but if that is truly our goal we should not be shaping public policy around non-scientific observations on correlations. Let's do some actual science please and build policy around that.

3minus1··on This is a teenager
It doesn't seem unlikely to me at all. Lots of people are smart or successful despite coming from a broken home. Weird example but Eminem was extremely poor growing up.
3minus1··on Embezzlers Are Nice People (2017)
> every business is a scam of sorts that relies upon the weaknesses of human nature to thrive

Yes, the next time you go to buy a computer or mobile phone you should just skip it because it's a scam. Just manufacture and assemble the hardware yourself and create the operating system/ecosystem of apps while you're at it. It just pure laziness not too. Or maybe consider that capitalism and the division of labor benefits you massively.

3minus1··on Man creatively sneaks onto Delta flight, but gets caught
It's true the system may have glitched in the past, but IMO the bigger issue is that the system provides no troubleshooting steps. What if it snapped a photo of every passenger as it scanned their ticket. Then on a duplicate scan it could display the photo of the passenger who already scanned the ticket. That could help the gate agent to actually troubleshoot the warning and figure out what happened.
3minus1··on Former University of Iowa hospital employee used fake identity for 35 years
As bad as it is that he was unjustly sent to a mental hospital, I wonder if getting on medication helped him get into a better place and advocate for himself more credibly.
3minus1··on Former University of Iowa hospital employee used fake identity for 35 years
In the article it says they proved his innocence by reaching out to his dad and doing a DNA test.
3minus1··on Ask HN: Any advice on navigating this job market or pivoting out of tech? (US)
With a CS degree you are well-positioned to get a job making good money after graduating. CS is still a good career, where you can work sane hours, with low stress, and get paid to think and solve and problems.

The current economic climate means it may mean a longer job search or worse job options, but getting any job with regular coding will be huge deal as the work experience will open many doors further down the line.

You already invested 4 years in training. You are qualified for a great many jobs. Unless you truly dislike the work itself, my advice is to stay the course.

3minus1··on Ask HN: Tenured folks got fired, how can one setup career to be safe?
A few pieces of advice:

* It's better to work 10 different jobs over the years, than do a single job for 10 years.

* Know how much you are worth and job hop when you are underpaid.

* Be aware of how the work you do creates value for the business. Chasing the latest tech fads is not adding value. Working on edge-case features that no one cares about is not adding value. Saving the company $$$ by making things more efficient absolutely adds value and job security.

* Always add value. If a role does not "feel right", like it's too easy and you know you are not contributing much then run.

* Seek mentors.

* Accept that change is the only constant and you could lose your job, but if you managed your career well finding a new job should not be bad.

* Manage your finances so you can weather a bad industry downturn.

3minus1··on Why Don't We Teach People How to Parent?
No. Evidence and research regarding childcare is absolutely better than what parents "naturally know", and when there is clear and compelling evidence it should be taught. Furthermore the idea that we should shy away from the word 'taught' itself is nonsense. Consider the modern guidance that newborns should sleep on their back. Prior to the 90s people were told newborns should sleep on their stomach. When this guidance was reversed it resulted in a 50% reduction in SIDS[1]. As in other areas, science is a trustworthy and reliable means of improving our knowledge about parenting, and parents should approach their duty with humility to learn not over-confidence in their "instincts".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_to_Sleep

3minus1··on Ask HN: What's the best car without undesirable features?
I can't speak to snow tires, but statistics clearly show 4WD/AWD significantly reduces fatality rates for a given car model.
3minus1··on Ask HN: (Over)hyped technologies that delivered
yeah, I remember reading an article once where someone claimed ordering a pizza off the internet was stupid and people would still just keep ordering by phone.
3minus1··on Australia to ban engineered stone
> I don't understand how banning it does anything to address the underlying problem of people wilfully ignoring PPE/safe working practices.

maybe it's because the "underlying problem" they are trying to address is people contracting and dying from silicosis

3minus1··on Ask HN: Meta's Threads is dead, isn't it?
I think it has a chance, Elon is constantly in the news for being offensive, and every time it's like an ad to move over to threads. In the meantime threads is getting better.
3minus1··on Ask HN: How did you overcome social anxiety?
I don't know why you read it that way. Talking to a therapist can help with depression, but so can introspecting privately and making similar realizations.
3minus1··on How to Work Effectively with Someone You Don't Like
talk with them? Explain with examples how their behavior impacts your ability to do your job and ask them what they recommend for working better together.
3minus1··on Ask HN: Why can't I get interviews or offers anymore?
2 interviews being cut short seems strange to me. I have been on both sides of the interview table and I have never seen an interview cut short. I would only consider it if the interviewee was bombing hard, like completely lost and unable to write code.

My best guess is that you are going up against candidates who are able to fluently process and manipulate CSV data in 40 minutes, probably using python. If that is indeed the gap that is preventing you from passing interviews, consider grinding leetcode problems, and getting good at filtering, sorting, transforming lists and dictionaries, etc.

Finally, I'm sorry to hear your going through this ordeal. Best of luck to you.

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