Hacker News Reader

HumanDrivenDevon Group led by Thomas Piketty presents plan for ‘a fairer Europe’

Populism is a precise way of appealing to basic emotions of a population by creating an "us vs them" narrative. You find an enemy, tell the people that the enemy is causing all their troubles and that you're the only cure because you're the only one on the people's side.

With a bit of perspective it's easy to see that this broadly describes socialism - which is the parents point. Socialism and social democracy is not commonly derided as 'populist'.

HumanDrivenDevon Group led by Thomas Piketty presents plan for ‘a fairer Europe’

Populism is merely a word to discredit something that a lot of people like, that those in power do not.

That is not to say that I agree with everything labeled 'populist'. I don't even think it's a left vs right thing, even if that's how it plays out now. I guarantee you if there was a broadly popular left-wing movement that actually threatened those in power, the media would label it populist as well.

HumanDrivenDevon Australia’s vague anti-encryption law sets a dangerous new precedent

But if you set foot inside the EU... you are in the EUs jurisdiction.

Extradition treaties are usually subject to 'dual criminality' - so you would have to be breaking the country you are in as well to be extradited for violation of that same law to the EU.

And be realistic. The US hasn't even successfully managed to extradite Kim Dotcom from mighty New Zealand.

HumanDrivenDevon Australia’s vague anti-encryption law sets a dangerous new precedent

It's possibly a good commercial decision given the size of the EU market, but a lot of people seem a bit delusional as to how much of an authority the EU is. They can't compel people outside their jurisdiction with the GDPR, anymore than Australia can with this law.

HumanDrivenDevon NULL: The worst mistake of computer science? (2015)

They’re not direct support, but option types only work in languages with the right syntax and tooling to make them work.

I strongly disagree.

You don't need pattern matching syntax to use option types effectively. All you need are the right methods - map, flatMap, getOrElse etc etc. Any language with inheritance and dynamic dispatch can implement a good option type.

Even in languages with pattern matching, I never reach for it when dealing with options.

HumanDrivenDevon I Quit Google Over Its Censored Chinese Search Engine

I think google should not be in China for the same reason - so Chinese users do not have it. Let them see how cut off and backwards they are - stuck using second rate clones like baidu - due to the communist party.

HumanDrivenDevon Ansel Adams’ pictures of LA recall an era of war factories and 10-cent hot dogs

Then you would have to explain why the same thing happened in other western countries where the dominant sugar is not HFCS.

HumanDrivenDevon Designing cities to counter loneliness? Let's explore the possibilities

Block social media, people would look up from their cell phones.

People were walking around looking at their cellphones before smartphones or social media took off. They were sending SMS messages. Or playing snake in monochrome. Or would you ban SMS as well? What about phone calls?

Block map sites, people would ask others for directions.

Chronically lonely people aren't going to get any meaningful fix asking strangers for directions.

Block movie streaming sites and people would get to the cinema more often.

Again, if you are lonely and have no friends, going to the cinema is just being in a room full of strangers. People go with their own groups. It's probably more alienating than just chilling out at home because it emphasizes your loneliness.

HumanDrivenDevon Set up a production-ready realtime GraphQL backend

I think your crystal ball is broken. That falls to shit as soon as you need things to work offline. Imagine if the gmail app worked that way - no more checking emails in tunnels.

HumanDrivenDevon Slow Software

I'm on 4gb ram with a spinning hard drive and I develop on it. I'd like something a bit faster but it's not a huge deal to use visual studio code, webpack etc.

HumanDrivenDevon Google Assistant iOS update lets you say ‘Hey Siri, OK Google’

Superstar DJs. Here we go!

HumanDrivenDevon How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

Of course everybody here who isn't successful assumes it's because of their intellect...classic Hacker News.

HumanDrivenDevon H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies

The same reason not every "I'm totally moving to canada/australia/new zealand/europe" liberal in the US can do so. Immigration laws.

HumanDrivenDevon H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies

I wish so badly I could trade places, as a conservative man stuck in a 'progressive' country with lower wages. Give me a great salary and Blumpffss 'regressive' US any day.

HumanDrivenDevon Archaeologists explore a rural field in Kansas, and a lost city emerges

Well here's the fantastic thing about newspapers and newspaper websites - you have the option of not buying them, and not visiting them. It's much nicer for the rest of us if you exercise those rights rather than complaining.

HumanDrivenDevon Archaeologists explore a rural field in Kansas, and a lost city emerges

https://www.choice.com.au/electronics-and-technology/interne...

Here's a good, fairly non-technical guide on things you can do to avoid geoblocking. It's targeted at Australian shoppers but would also be relevant to Europeans wanting to access international websites.

HumanDrivenDevon Archaeologists explore a rural field in Kansas, and a lost city emerges

I wonder how they got by when street corner newsstand were the only way to get views.

They got by because people paid them money to buy the newspaper.

HumanDrivenDevon Traveling the World on a Third World Passport

Your definition of privilege was 'unearned'. I would challenge that by saying that privilege is earned by successive generations generating and maintanining said privilege.

https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php

The nation at the top of this list was a low-income, third world nation 60 years ago. Do you think this happened by accident?

HumanDrivenDevon Traveling the World on a Third World Passport

Then I disagree that it's privilege. A civilisation requires active effort to maintain, it cannot just float by on its own inertia. If people from western countries did nothing but inherit the privilege of their parents, society would quickly erode, and then their passport would be at the bottom of the list as well.

HumanDrivenDevon Traveling the World on a Third World Passport

What do you mean by privilege here?

HumanDrivenDevon SQLite – The “server-process-edition” branch

SQLite has 64 bit integers. In fact row ids are 64 bit by default since version 3.

HumanDrivenDevon In a Town of 11 People, Mysterious Disappearance Turns Neighbor Against Neighbor

You love this article about the possible murder of a 70 year old alcoholic labourer who lived by himself with no family in the whole country?

I think it's sad.

HumanDrivenDevon Baltimore police will pay consultant $176k to maintain Lotus Notes system

Use a VPN.

HumanDrivenDevon Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

She might have been impeached at this point

Because she was incredibly corrupt. Seems likely that foreign intelligence agencies had even more information they could leak.

The separated immigrant children are probably never going to get over it, for example.

It's unfortunate their parents decided to break the laws of the United States and enter the country illegally. Maybe their plight will discourage others from doing the same.

And I'm not going to get over a result while I'm still worrying about stockpiling food.

That seems like more of an issue with paranoia, then anything happening in reality.

HumanDrivenDevon Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

It really does come down to sour grapes. The mental contortions people go to question a democratically determined result really is telling. A lot of people are only fans of democracy when it goes their way.

HumanDrivenDevon Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

I don't know. It's really hard to imagine what a Hilary Clinton presidency would have been like. She might have been impeached at this point. Likewise, it's really hard to tell what the long term effects of Brexit will be. I think history will be in a better position to judge it 10 years down the line.

But I really think people need to get over both results. It's been two years now. The remoaners are much worse than their american equivalents. But on the other hand - how many variations on the same joke are Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah going to do? And - more to the point - how many post mortems is Hacker News going to have? No to mention the constant "I'm so woke gaiz" quips about it. Imagine if between 2008-2016 HN had been full of one liners about how Obama had no birth certificate. It would get so tiresome.

HumanDrivenDevon Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

It's really interesting coming to HN and watching the indignant 'stabbed in the back' theories about why the establishment lost the Brexit referendum and 2016 US presidential election. 2 years on and it still stings that the people didn't vote the way they were supposed to. There is definitely a classist, privileged undertone to the discourse as well - ironic but not surprising coming from many self-described socialists.

HumanDrivenDevon Global variables are bad (2013)

What is with all this contrarianism against basic software best practices in tech circles these days? First the thread about how great copy pasting was, and now people praising the use of global variables. What's next - goto advocacy? Segmentation faults as the preferred error handling technique?

HumanDrivenDevon The Wrong Abstraction (2016)

I don't get this post and I don't get all the comments in support of copy pasting code, and against DRY. I am going to need a real life example of when copy pasting is a good idea, because I've never seen it. Giving some 'shared code' a name really doesn't seem like it's a dangerous path.

Programmer B feels honor-bound to retain the existing abstraction, but since isn't exactly the same for every case, they alter the code to take a parameter, and then add logic to conditionally do the right thing based on the value of that parameter.

Programmer B's poor decision doesn't mean you should reach for ctrl-v, in my humble opinion. But I'm willing to change my mind, if there's a compelling case.

HumanDrivenDevon GraphQL Didn't Kill REST

Here I was continuing my naive existence, blissfuly unaware that REST was even dead!