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EleventhSun

200 karma · joined March 12, 2014

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EleventhSun··on Ask HN: Best open-source projects for first time contributer?
I need help integrating Lucene/Solr (a search indexer with a REST API) into WikiPaper (http://wikipaper.org). You can do the backend in whatever language you like. It's an independent project so you don't need to read a ton of code to get up to speed.

I'm not sure how long it will take, probably some number of weekends. Any help is appreciated!

EleventhSun··on Ask HN: Why aren't there many back-end frameworks in C++ for web development?
People do, although I'm unsure how often.

Here's 3 Qt (cross-platform) frameworks:

http://stefanfrings.de/qtwebapp/index-en.html (I've personally used this, it's a good one!)

https://github.com/vinipsmaker/tufao

https://github.com/nitroshare/qhttpengine

EleventhSun··on Ask HN: Foreign founders – would you incorporate in the US today?
There are many, many disadvantages of incorporating here. For example, if you are an atheist, or have any other ideas that are anti-mainstream (eg. are critical of dogmatic feminism or runaway capitalism) you may be targeted by the surveillance state, which in my case has already happened.

The added stress compounds the existing stress of running a startup.

If YC opened an international branch, I would leave in a heartbeat. I'm also looking into Techstars, which seems to have some international presence. I really hope YC takes some leadership here.

EleventhSun··on Ask HN: Coding notes – how do you do them?
I use cherrytree, it's a tree-like set of notes http://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/
EleventhSun··on Ask HN: Disrupting housing segregation in the US?
- Add an upper bound to the number of investment properties someone can own. Owning more than one or two is clearly parasitic behavior. Banning this parasitic behavior allows breathing room for minorities to get onto the property ladder.

- Add tax subsidies to encourage employees working from home. This will help stop gentrification, etc, since developers can work from unconventional neighborhoods more easily, and also means that employees don't have to pay extortionary rent/interest for housing.

EleventhSun··on I Only Work Remotely
I've been explicitly told not to do it and still do it. So long as you're productive it doesn't matter.
EleventhSun··on Ask HN: Can we get a ruling on political submissions?
The discussion is often not as good as here.
EleventhSun··on What will Google do to guarantee privacy against Trump?
This attitude is so defeatist. It's not hard for executives to look at companies in free countries vs companies in oppressive countries and see which ones are doing better. It makes business sense for them to try to maintain at least some freedom.

If people want to see these features implemented, find someone at Google and, let them know! Eventually it will happen.

Although I agree with using your own stuff instead of theirs.

EleventhSun··on What will Google do to guarantee privacy against Trump?
Their purpose is to make money. Therefore, entities that make it harder to make money (eg an oppressive government) will be seen as threats. Therefore, they take actions like convincing the entire internet to use https.

It's not as simple as "invade privacy" = "profit!". They sell advertising, that's their actual business model.

EleventhSun··on What will Google do to guarantee privacy against Trump?
I would imagine they haven't done it simply because the execs haven't thought about it or don't understand end-to-end encryption. If you know someone at google, give them a prod to do it.

Adding end-to-end encryption to the gmail app would not be difficult. It would work similarly to end-to-end encryption in whatsapp, and would be massive boon for freedom worldwide.

Google is not pro-NSA spying, not by a long shot, despite common belief. They are the ones who convinced the entire web to turn to HTTPS, for instance. Check out: http://www.google.com/takeaction.

Additionally Sergey Brin grew up in the Soviet Union until the age of 6, his father was marginalized, he knows the cost of a dysfunctional society.

Turning the USA into 1984 isn't good business sense, so even for that reason alone Google would do it (that is, add end-to-end encryption, etc).

EleventhSun··on Ask HN: What's stopping you from using Firefox as your primary browser?
I use it but it's frustrating that it doesn't support multithreading which is why it's so slow. Fortunately that will be fixed soon though.
EleventhSun··on George Orwell’s 1984 is currently the top selling book on Amazon
I would actually argue that what we have today is worse than 1984. If you read the book, the protagonists have economic security/stability, even if in a totalitarian government. We have both nightmare spying AND economic insecurity.
EleventhSun··on George Orwell’s 1984 is currently the top selling book on Amazon
Sorry I clicked on the wrong 'reply' button, comment now moved to the right location, sorry again.
EleventhSun··on George Orwell’s 1984 is currently the top selling book on Amazon
Definitely.

First off some context for this rant: a lot of people don't realize it but we are a lot closer to a post-scarcity world than the world would have you think. Check out this chart which shows GDP per capita since the 1950's. The productivity gains since the 1950's have been absolutely incredible, and the quality of life back then was pretty good. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA

So, have you ever noticed there's never any dialogue about encouraging men to be stay at home dads, or reducing the overall household number of hours worked per week? Never. The dialogue is always about the "wage gap" and "women have value too" and "rape culture" and "microaggressions". Men who are stay at home dads still get shamed just as much as they did during the 1950's. This is how you know it's a sham - there is never any serious dialogue about actual equality. Income has in no way, shape, or form, kept up the with the GDP per capita shown in the chart above. There's never any explorations of policies that would actually increase equality, like restricting the number of "investment properties" a man or woman can own, behavior which is clearly parasitic. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_productivity_and_...

It's not in corporate interests to have people have actual equality. Increasing the labor pool without discussions of actual equality makes it so that people can be kept in debt, wages go down and the nexus of power moves away from the family and towards the corporation, which is what is happening.

There's also the constant screaming of "women have value too". The implication here is that if you are not working for money you have no value. Despite common belief, in fact it IS possible to generate value outside of a money context. Many of the world's greatest achievements have occured outside a money context, eg. the discovery of calculus, wikipedia, linux, countless famous works of art, literature, and philosophy. By saying that you only have value if you earn money is throwing many of the world's most accomplished people under a bus. The reason why "money is the only form of value" is such a horrible mentality is that it leads to people like Mozart dying in poverty and being thrown into a ditch, which actually happened.

Check out charts of combined household numbers of hours worked, you'll see it's going way UP not down, despite the GDP per capita chart shown above. There is clearly something dark in that picture. http://www.bls.gov/opub/working/chart17.pdf

I don't think these are idle complaints - feminism in its current form (money above all) is an ideology that's on a direct collision course with the whole 'robots are about to take all the jobs' reality, which I think is going to come a lot sooner than we realize, and when these two phenoma collide, what's going to happen is that it's not going to be equality (sorry folks) it's going to be Brave New World, an immensely stratified society.

What's incredible to me is that someone predicted this nearly 100 years ago. Aldous Huxley, you are a genius.

I should just buy a ticket to Iceland already.

EleventhSun··on George Orwell’s 1984 is currently the top selling book on Amazon
See comment below.
EleventhSun··on George Orwell’s 1984 is currently the top selling book on Amazon
In 2017, people have to rely on anchoring their sexual meanings based on male/female electrical adapters.

Yep, 1984 is here.

EleventhSun··on George Orwell’s 1984 is currently the top selling book on Amazon
Third wave feminism has absolutely nothing do to with equality, it's all about getting people to attack the people to the side rather than look above.
EleventhSun··on Charles Bukowski: The Slavery of the 9 to 5
Even Egyptian slaves weren't at the bottom of the ladder (eg. they had subservient wives). Not advocating "sexism" here but it's worth mentioning subservience. Software engineers often really are at the bottom of the ladder, however. Food for thought.
EleventhSun··on The Machine: On our collective efforts to save ourselves
In the real world, only one person owns the machine, and is able to undercut everyone else's labor in the name of "fairness".
EleventhSun··on Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?
Living abroad and teaching english.

Or, teaching engineering.

EleventhSun··on Ask HN: Is it worth it to learn desktop GUI frameworks anymore?
Well, I can't speak for other frameworks, but C++/Qt is very much likely to be worth your time at some point.

In general, it's well written and well-documented. Many things you expect that will be hard to do in C++ are suddenly made easy. Just go through some of their small examples to get a gist of signals/slots, QObjects and QWidgets. If you're struggling with CMake I would recommend to stick with .pro files ("qmake") as the syntax is much, much less of a headache.

EleventhSun··on A world without work
Speak for yourself, buddy. I contemplated my existence all the time, as a child.
EleventhSun··on Ask HN: How to network in San Francisco as a super introvert?
This is an fairly ignorant post - it's well established that introversion has nothing to do with shyness [0] [1].

One common definition of extroversion vs introversion is that an introvert needs time alone to recharge, whereas an extrovert needs time around people to recharge.

I would suggest doing some reading on the topic to prevent undervaluing a large portion of the population. For example, see [2], or Susan Cain's "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" [3].

[0] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/introvert-myths_n_3...

[1] http://psychcentral.com/library/shyness.htm

[2] http://www.bustle.com/articles/56526-7-things-all-introverts...

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/d...

EleventhSun··on Ask HN: Bad software or bad hardware, the choice is yours
Might be worth looking into ASUS notebooks (for ubuntu-based distros, that is).

I run an N76 with no driver issues, and 16GB RAM. I believe there are other models that work well too.

EleventhSun··on Ask HN: How to get a job working with self-driving cars?
Learn everything there is to know about SLAM. And then perhaps contribute to open-source navigation projects and the like.
EleventhSun··on What tool will accomplish this task?
Telnet?
EleventhSun··on Ask HN: $500k cash – what to do with it?
Convert it all to Dogecoin.
EleventhSun··on Build Muscle Memory With Your Favorite Editor
This is awesome OP, have been waiting for something like this.
EleventhSun··on Ask HN: What do people think of Ray Kurzweil's theories (AI, etc)?
The 90% fail / 10% success analogy is a kind of helpful way to put things in context, thanks for your input.

Technology is a bit of a wild beast, I feel like Dr Kurzweil is almost the personification of its unpredictability/mystery in some ways.

EleventhSun··on Ask HN: how to gauge my skill as a programmer
I found this to be quite interesting - the Programmer Competency Matrix. It's hard to be honest with yourself with these things, but worth a look anyway:

http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/