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RandoHolmes

250 karma · joined August 22, 2020

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RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
gasp

YOU MEAN THE SLAVE OWNER POINTED TO THE CURRENT LAWS TO DEFEND THEIR POSITION!?!??!

Well that worked out well in terms of their history, lmao.

Please, keep telling me how the site guidelines for a random website somehow protect you from the moral judgement of others, I'd love to hear more...

RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
omg, you're so right!

The blogger had to be scouted by the agency, which used agency resources, therefore the blogger is totally liable for that risk!!!!!oneoneoneneoneshiftoneshiftoneshiftoneshiftone.

--

Imagine a world in which the risk is taken on by yourself and not others... but of course that's totes not possibru...

RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
No one is saying that current laws aren't bullshit, they obviously are.

The point is that that if Uber goes away, it won't stop people from paying for rides.

It's a bit like claiming if Hershey's claimed that people would stop eating chocolate if they couldn't abuse their relationship with local governments to get water rights they have no business having.

Noooooooo, people will still like Chocolate, it's just that more "moral" companies will replace them.

If anything, the value of chocolate will go up and that's perfectly acceptable.

RandoHolmes··on Laypeople can predict which social-science studies will replicate successfully
You pulled those numbers out of your ass...

The truth is that 99% of the population believes that homosexual couples will have less children then heterosexual...

The surprising result for the uneducated? That homosexual couples have any children...

RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
I'd like to buy "what is stockholm's syndrome for 500 alex!".

https://www.britannica.com/science/Stockholm-syndrome

The better question. Are you implying this doesn't exist and therefore the woman in question is guilty?

I mean, not that this has anything to do with the overarching point, but.... you're so wrong that you're wrong even when you're wrong.

enter: BUT I'M GOING TO DEFINE FREEWILL SO IT DOESN'T INCLUDE STOCKHOLME SYNDROME...

yeah ok.... That certainly makes you ... biased.

RandoHolmes··on Laypeople can predict which social-science studies will replicate successfully
How can we know that eggs are tasty unless a 3rd party tells us!

I won't quote the science, I'll simply say that things are knowable outside of a system...

RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
I would like for you to define 'free will' in such a way that it cannot, in any way, include slavery. And you must do so by not explicitly defining it as 'not slavery'.

go.

RandoHolmes··on The Universe Knows Right from Wrong
It's almost as if defining anything as a "mathematical truth" is definitionally wrong and anyone having done so should be called out as a liar.

Only the person who responded to the person who made such a statement were more polite about it, hence this "discussion".

RandoHolmes··on The Universe Knows Right from Wrong
Thank you, I took the same issue you did when reading this.

There are not "truths" in mathematics, it's literally a system of logic with definitions at the bottom (axioms) and then a following of the results based upon the agreed upon logic.

RandoHolmes··on Laypeople can predict which social-science studies will replicate successfully
I don't know, anything that implied dogs being raped would have been rejected by me, a layperson who grew up with dogs.

Your argument seems to be more about "because some people were duped, it's ok to assume reasonable people were duped" and that doesn't seem right to me.

RandoHolmes··on Laypeople can predict which social-science studies will replicate successfully
Maybe this particular study, but I have to say I believe it in general.

I remember working for a manufacturing company where I drove a forklift (during the summer).

One of my most vivid memories is walking into the breakroom and seeing on the television a scrolling banner that declared homosexual couples were less likely to have children than heterosexual couples.

And I remember everyone in that room laughing their asses off. And it's not as if no one in that room realized the reason for the study was so they could take into account things like adoption, etc. It's that the result was so obvious, even taking that into account, that it was amazing that someone was PAID to come to a conclusion that everyone knew without the money.

And this is the crux of the problem with "science". It wants to be "interesting", so it will literally try to drum up something against what "everyone knows".

So the idea that what everyone over generations "knows" is generally more applicable than "science" is not surprising at all.

RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
I guess slavery is worth having since someone, somewhere, "chose" to do it...

Wait, what's that!?!? Are you saying it's acceptable for society to make decisions for those who don't have the leverage to protect themselves?!?! WHAT?!?!? Say it aint so Mr Magoo, say it aint so...

Cause I hurd if you ever make a decision for another human being you're immoral, making all parents immoral. That's just how this shit wurks my brutha!

RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
Why would it be unethical to cut out the middle man??

Oh nooo!?!?! How dare I hire that blogger directly, I'll go to jail/be fined for not going through a hiring agency!?!?!

You realize that stupid opinions exist, right?

RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
Several in fact!

But to take your implication head on, I once worked for a company whose owner decided to do this stuff himself.

It resulted in several instances of people going unpaid for a few days and the owner sending out an email basically saying "if you don't get your paycheck on this friday and need money, come talk to me, I'll fix it".

The result?

The owner finally started paying someone who was competent enough to ensure everyone got paid on payday!

These laws exist for a reason, and those reasons generally involve people being affected by it.

---

My learnin's from watching all of that happen is not to take it lightly.

RandoHolmes··on A controversial company using DNA to sketch the faces of criminals
that's the wrong attitude.

That would be like a layman hearing someone say "general AI isn't possible, their claims are bollocks" and someone responding with "maybe that's true, but do you have a background in general AI?".

And this attitude causes things like police to arrest the wrong person because they don't understand the limits of machine learning.

I don't need to be an expert to simply say this is problematic and shouldn't be used. YOU need an expert to explain why it CAN be used.

We need more skepticism, not less.

But to answer your question, I understand biology well enough to understand the challenges involved here. But you don't even need that to understand the problem. In their marketing photo's, they've attempted to replicate the _HAIRSTYLE_. That by itself is all you need to understand how low the applicability of this is.

Just imagine a police officer arresting someone who was bald and sort of looked like the criminal because this algorithm chose to render them as bald. People aren't NEARLY good enough at being able to identify a _STRANGER_ with a radically different hairstyle to be trusted with this.

RandoHolmes··on Ask HN: What is a better approach to interviewing?
I just want to say that this is an attitude that's come up over time and as an older person it baffles me.

To explain, college curriculum's require atleast 1 public speaking class. These classes are infamously difficult for a lot of people who find it scary to talk in front of a class of 30+ students. But society as a whole considered it to be the young persons responsibility to overcome this fear.

Nowadays, it's far more likely that people are going to make arguments such as "the class shouldn't be required" or some other thing to try and help the young person avoid the scary public speaking.

My point here is that yes, it's true there are going to be some who struggle with presenting to 5-6 people. That's on them. If they can't talk to 5-6 people they're going to find something as simple as a daily standup to be scary as well, should we just get rid of it? (Actually, I hate standups and think they're a waste of time, but you get the point).

It's also not clear to me why you characterized this as a "large group", but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say maybe you're used to interviews where 20-30 people get involved. That's certainly not what I'm suggesting.

And finally,

I can't imagine a young developer not being able to have a 5-10 minute talk in front of others about something like, say "What is memory safety in rust and why should it be used for new projects" when we're hiring for someone to work in rust.

A more senior person would obviously get more generic options. The one I personally spoke about was roughly "What can we as a company be doing to empower software developers to create the best software possible".

RandoHolmes··on Ask HN: What is a better approach to interviewing?
> Many people don’t have such abilities, and 95% of the people I know never needed to present something to any audience so they don’t have experience in it either.

You act as if the people listening aren't aware of this.

What is it you believe exactly, that if person A sounded nervous they wouldn't be hired?

The entire point is to get a conversation started, and the following Q&A allows them to do something everyone needs to do in a job, which is to answer questions.

No interview process is perfect. You can literally give me a description of any interview process and I can start finding problems with it.

Just as you can literally give me a description of any software solution and I can start finding problems with it.

That you can find problems with it doesn't make it useless or harmful. Please come up with better criticisms.

RandoHolmes··on Ask HN: What is a better approach to interviewing?
It's not possible to create a "perfect" interview process. I can literally give your criticism to every single interview process you can ever imagine and be correct in that criticism.

It's akin to saying that because some people have anxiety issues, we should completely do away with interviews and just let people randomly walk in and do work.

Because that's the only way to potentially avoid the criticism you gave here, only that's also not true because locale comes into play. "You didn't create a building every 500 feet that people can walk into, so now you're disenfranchising people without cars!".

My point here is that this is not a useful criticism. Come up with a useful grievance, one that's actually actionable, and then maybe we can talk.

RandoHolmes··on Ask HN: What is a better approach to interviewing?
What baffles me is that you wrote this after my edit and are still pretending that I was suggesting hours long powerpoint presentations when I very specifically said otherwise.
RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
> Previously in our history, you could apprentice and earn almost nothing while you learned a trade. To me, this is much better than paying a school to earn a trade and interning for free.

I think you should read up on guilds and how they operated. You would change your opinion very quickly.

RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
> Safety standards could be addressed by insurability, and this is really a very separate concept from wage.

Sorry, but no. And I'm going to judge you for having that opinion.

The idea that it's acceptable for a human being to lose their sight (or legs or arms or ...) and suffer the quality of life problems that result from it as long as they're covered by insurance is horrendous and I judge you for it.

I don't even care if you come back and tell me you've changed your mind based upon this post. The fact that you needed your mind changed makes you a monster.

RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
As a software developer, if I were asked to sweep the floors I'd probably find another company to work for.

Or maybe not depending on how much I cared about the company, but most likely I would.

So for these companies, it's required.

RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
> Why would I pay an uneducated, inexperienced person to sweep floors $20 per hour? I’ll do it myself first.

Because you don't want to do it or you don't have the time.

If I could pay someone 1 cent per hour to wipe my ass crack I would do it, is it a problem that I must instead wipe my own ass crack?

The answer is literally there in your post, these jobs aren't worth having. Imagine posting this yelling "think of the people who will no longer be able to wipe others' ass cracks!".

Ok....

RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
> And if we as a society decide that people should have health care, food to eat, and shelter , we shouldn’t put the burden on private companies.

Why? Do they not benefit from the same healthy society that's created from this?

RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
> These jobs did not exist pre-ride-sharing companies.

Is it your contention that taxi's didn't exist pre-Uber? Or that Taxi's weren't jobs done by ordinary people?

I can tell you as someone who is over 40, I would regularly form relationships with Taxi drivers so that I could simply call them up and ask them if they'd be available on X day, X time, and if they could use the "special" rate, and the answer was yes. Where special rate meant paying just them and not the taxi company I met them through.

There is nothing special about Uber or Lyft, and if they leave California the existing Taxi company's will fill in the gap.

RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
You can imagine just these sorts of arguments being raised when things like the 40 hour work week was going into effect.

And yet, here we are, years later, with the 40 hour work week and companies somehow successfully surviving.

RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
Oh dear god, found the person who has never been homeless.

Do you REALLY believe that laws that, say... limit how much interest you can charge on a loan CREATE vulnerability and marginalization?

Seriously?

RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
> However, I think that trying to place market restrictions on two parties making an agreement is not the right way to go about it.

There are restrictions placed around how much you can charge in interest for taking a loan. Imagine if someone were to place a 1000% loan because they knew the people taking them were desperate enough for their next meal that they would take that that.

These laws exist for a reason. That they inconvenience you (or anyone else) is irrelevant.

---

edit: well, not irrelevant... it's the entire point.

RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
Having been homeless in my life, I agree with you and I submit anyone who disagrees with you has lived a charmed life.
RandoHolmes··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
> The implication being that without such laws, enslavement of children, poisoning and maiming of workers, and other horrors would be totally legal in America?

Perhaps you don't recall the number of years in which slavery was legal in the US?

Or the years in which child labor was actually used?

Or the years in which a 40 hour work week wasn't normal?

The only way I'm able to understand how ANYONE can believe everything would be hunky dory without labor laws is if they haven't been educated in the history of this country (or any other country).

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