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WilliamEdwardon Signs that a business idea will probably fail

Forget about 3000 a month, some people have very 'simple' businesses like clothing retail and earn way above engineers salary, which is really what a lot of entrepreneurs want at the end of the day. There's nothing new or innovative about these ideas other than maybe the right branding or location, but it goes over the tech industry's heads here because their venture capitalist overlords are telling them to work on unicorn ideas because they want to make billions, when most founders would be content with just making millions.

Or maybe VC's actually want to change the world and don't care about profit? I'll just take the money, thanks.

WilliamEdwardon Bad times in corporate wireless networks

nice thanks

WilliamEdwardon Bad times in corporate wireless networks

Seconding this. I personally do not understand any of the jargon used here at all, let alone what the implications of it is.

WilliamEdwardon When bad UX is good

Purple links are used in most websites for links that have been visited. On this site it's confusing as to whether you've visited these links or not.

A huge problem? Maybe not, but not a sign of 'good UX'

WilliamEdwardon When bad UX is good

A week or two ago there was a discussion here about how genius this supposedly is, or how you shouldn't waste time to fix what isn't broken, etc.

I will take this moment to repeat that it would take less than a second to make those links blue instead of purple and the design would already be infinitely more usable.

Sometimes bad ux is bad.

WilliamEdwardon Rob Pike interview

A little biased don't you think?

WilliamEdwardon Juul is reportedly laying off 800 to 950 employees

It doesn't really matter if an addiction kills you or not, the question is whether the dependency is strong enough to take away from other activities in your life.

WilliamEdwardon Juul is reportedly laying off 800 to 950 employees

This is a very tired point I see very often when discussing the morality of people who provide value to society.

If Juul's service was solely and specifically helping people get off cigarettes, great. It's not though, is it? They sell nicotine to minors. If they cared about doing good, they would simply not sell nicotine to minors. By this judgement I can group the executives at Juul into villians and not be 'reductive' about it, because it's very clear they make profit off of evil when they don't have to.

I'd also not like to see the argument that they aren't technically 'selling' juuls too minors. We're way past that point; it's super obvious the advertising is made up in such a way as to facilitate profits from minors. Just because it goes through a 3rd party doesn't eliminate blame from Juul, who remember have taken no steps to prevent children from smoking them.

WilliamEdwardon 0.999...= 1

This is essentially just a matter of limits, without which the world wouldn't make any sense.

So you must explain that if you move your hand closer to an object, technically you are halving the distance infinitely many times, but if 0.999... != 1 then your hand would never touch anything.

WilliamEdwardon SICP in Python

I see we've reached the point in python's popularity where it is cool to hate it. Happened with C++, Java, Javascript, PHP, and now... Python, of all things. Maybe the least bad of all of those. Like it or not it's here to stay.

If Scheme (or whatever language you use) was as popular as python you would think it is bad too since most code out there would be made by amateurs, and its flaws (which all languages have) would be unavoidable.

WilliamEdwardon Disney claims anyone using a Twitter hashtag is agreeing to their terms of use

Yes, obviously, but why would anyone need to consent to disney's own private terms of use on a different website for this? That's the shady part here. There could be anything in that TOS, and this tweet will trick a lot of people into agreeing with something they didn't read and shouldn't have to.

WilliamEdwardon Disney claims anyone using a Twitter hashtag is agreeing to their terms of use

It would have to be trademarked and there is no possible way this could get trademarked, since trademarks must be non-generic. Yes, even with the hash symbol.

WilliamEdwardon Disney claims anyone using a Twitter hashtag is agreeing to their terms of use

It would have been fine with me if they didn't include the part about agreeing to their own private terms of use on a completely different website. What a strange way to trick people.

Other than that it just seems like a way to ask people to allow them to use replies in a video or something.

Edit: But wait, this is actually STILL ambiguous! On twitter, a 'mention' happens automatically when you reply to a tweet, because it includes the name of the account replied to, so it's not clear whether you actually have to tag @disneyplus or not.

WilliamEdwardon Anatomists of Melancholy in the Age of Coronavirus

I don't argue for that system, I argue for whatever the rest of the world on average seems to be doing since opioids are much less of a problem in countries comparable to the US. The US must be doing something wrong with a lack of regulations in this industry, and the only common factor is unhinged profit-seeking.

WilliamEdwardon Anatomists of Melancholy in the Age of Coronavirus

Thanks for explaining and not just downvoting them. This is a serious socioeconomic issue.

WilliamEdwardon Anatomists of Melancholy in the Age of Coronavirus

Unregulated capitalism, their research suggests.

Opioids have few regulations on how much are prescribed. This ties in directly to the healthcare issue.

Private Prisons are run by using prisoners as workers for less than a dollar an hour. This is constitutionally legal. This means there is a financial incentive to imprison people.

Elections are influenced by corporate lobbying. The state works for businesses at least as much as it works for the people, but guess who gets first preference.

Healthcare is based on profit and not on saving lives. Self explanatory and this has been talked about countless times throughout the past 4 years.

Education I don't know much about.

WilliamEdwardon Anatomists of Melancholy in the Age of Coronavirus

This is not true. Capital requires the use of laws and state violence to enforce a claim upon it.

WilliamEdwardon How to speed up the Rust compiler in 2020

Thanks, I inferred incorrectly.

WilliamEdwardon How to speed up the Rust compiler in 2020

https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...

This is a handy resource, though no benchmarks are ever perfect. Rust comes out faster on about half the algorithms. They're pretty close though.

WilliamEdwardon Now Open – AWS Africa (Cape Town) Region

Cape Town is becoming a serious tech hub

WilliamEdwardon Shirt Without Stripes

querying "shirt no stripes" yields slightly better results.

WilliamEdwardon Ask HN: How is your PPP loan application coming along?

Now just imagine how the workers losing their jobs that don't have savings or loans feel.

WilliamEdwardon Roger Penrose – Is Mathematics Invented or Discovered? [video]

If it is discovered, then it means there exists math which we don't have to 'invent' and can simply be found like some buried treasure.

WilliamEdwardon The Berkshire Hathaway Site is a master class in human-centered design

You could do something as simple as making the links blue instead of purple and it would already be an infinitely better design because people assume purple links have been visited.

It would also cost nothing.

WilliamEdwardon The Berkshire Hathaway Site is a master class in human-centered design

People aren't coming to your website randomly, they're coming because you're their professor and they were linked this site.

WilliamEdwardon The Berkshire Hathaway Site is a master class in human-centered design

That's dangerous to do here when the essay in question is written by someone with a massive cult following.

WilliamEdwardon Analyzing HN readers' personal blogs

It's just a blog, matomo is more common in production.

WilliamEdwardon Analyzing HN readers' personal blogs

Or perhaps you think there are more people against GA here than there actually are.

WilliamEdwardon I can't keep up with idiomatic Rust

Actually it's approximately 20% of rust's total time on earth. That's very long, relatively speaking.

WilliamEdwardon For 11 Years, the Soviet Union Had No Weekends (2018)

I would be more worried about repeating mistakes from the other side of the political spectrum this time, since that's more likely and currently what seems to be happening.