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alphakappa

1,753 karma · joined December 10, 2010

Engineer and stuff.
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alphakappa··on Some Apple engineers rewarded up to $180k in stock bonuses as incentive to stay
> HMs in small companies, maybe, in big companies , they dont care, they are paid to bring talent in, they don't get penalized if an employee quits after a year.

Recruiters might be paid to bring people in, but HMs are the ones whose teams these hires typically work for, so being able to do productive things with them is more important than just bringing people in. The cost of retraining, losing institutional knowledge etc, and just the time it takes to bring in a new person are all costs that take away from the actual work of building the product.

alphakappa··on Hiking America’s three longest trails in less than a year. What could go wrong?
If a bear charges you, chances are the gun won’t be much help.
alphakappa··on Gmail’s fake loading indicator (2020)
While not technically a precise loading indicator, this seems to be along the lines of giving a better user experience than anything else. Gmail has real dark patterns though. One of which is to load the emails first, and then after a short delay (even on a fast connection) load advertisement rows on top. So if you attempt to click one of the new emails on top, you're just as likely to hit an ad that just loaded in that space.

Probably creates a ton of false clicks for whoever is paying for that advert.

alphakappa··on Peter the Great’s Beard Tax
The western industrialization didn’t create gulags in the western world, but it was largely paid for by untold cruelty in Asia and Africa, and slavery in the US. Concentration camps existed far before the Nazis, and many millions died through genocide and famine created by the European powers.
alphakappa··on Mighty Makes Google Chrome Faster
> There are strict policies internally about viewing someone’s browser history: it is prohibited. https://www.mightyapp.com/mightyapp.com/security

This is a strange commitment to pricacy. Not that there’s a technical barrier to employees accessing data, but something along the lines of “we wrote up a rule in the company wiki, so we trust that employees won’t violate it”

alphakappa··on World Beer Index 2021: The Cost and Consumption of Beer Around the World
Using the average price of a beer can be quite misleading. Without knowing how popular each beer is, it is unlikely to provide a sense of what locals are actually paying for beer.

A better methodology might have been to compute the expected value of a beer (essentially weighting the price of a beer by the probability of purchase of that beer)

(Also, as others have noted, the standard size of a beer varies, so only including data for a particular size can bias the results). Knowing the price/ml might be an interesting statistic too, but it would have been good to know the price of a beer (for whatever ‘a beer’ means locally)

alphakappa··on Google is getting left behind due to horrible UI/UX
> you can't just revamp the UX for a product used by billions of users without some pretty serious blowback.

And yet, Gmail keeps getting redesigned every so often to the point where it's hard to figure out how basic stuff works. This is a hard argument to buy.

*It took me a decent amount of time to figure out how to add users to cc/bcc. This sort of stuff, which was easy to do in the 90s shouldn't become harder every year.

alphakappa··on Warner Bros. Will Send Entire 2021 Slate to HBO Max and Theaters
What was your UST projector of choice? I have one of the LG ones, and in my experience, the focus isn't sharp across the whole image.
alphakappa··on Warner Bros. Will Send Entire 2021 Slate to HBO Max and Theaters
Yes, it could be seen that way, but in practice, are people really going to collect a few dollars from everyone who's watching a movie in their house with them?

There are ways to justify a $20 movie rental, but it feels different to go spend that at a theater vs paying it at home. I will wager that it's a much harder decision to make as the value proposition is different.

alphakappa··on Dolly Parton helped fund Moderna’s vaccine. It began with an unlikely friendship
Instead of downvoting the parent (who is asking a legitimate question) or getting snarky, maybe the commenters can actually explain how such a donation makes a significant difference to an industry that operates with much larger numbers.

It would be educational to hear from someone who understands this industry (as opposed to speculation) about the economics of such donations. Does this move the needle for a company as large as Moderna? Since this donation was made to Vanderbilt, does it enable multiple streams of research that gets licensed by Moderna? Does it enable the company to try out avenues that they wouldn't have done in the absence of the funding? What does this level of money actually purchase? (grants to individual researchers, equipment etc)

alphakappa··on Ask HN: What did you purchase that measurably improved your quality of life?
1. An electric pressure cooker. A total game changer when it comes to meal prep (I purchased the Breville version)

2. Replacing the TV with a projector

3. Adjustable weights (makes all the difference while sheltering in place in an apartment)

4. Better food storage tools (a vacuum sealer, weck jars, glass Tupperware etc). Makes all the difference when it comes to food wastage.

alphakappa··on Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code
Neither does YouTube, likely the most popular video playing entity today, respect the spacebar on iOS.
alphakappa··on New Stuff
It's likely to be an iPad + Procreate.
alphakappa··on Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first
> the officer involved (who actually knew George Floyd prior to killing him) is being brought up on charges, which is the exact opposite of what happens in a system that has systemic racism.

How do you infer this? It could also be the result of the mass country-wide protests which are absolutely not the norm. It's not like the system automatically corrected for this issue.

alphakappa··on Jim Keller Resigns from Intel, Effective Immediately
Elon's PayPal wealth is not a rare occurrence. There are over 500 billionaires in just the US alone. His wealth was an essential ingredient for sure, but it must be obvious that it takes more than wealth to create a company like SpaceX.
alphakappa··on Ethiopia has launched its first satellite into space
Almost every time there is a story about a non western country launching rockets or satellites, the trolls come out commenting on how these countries need to be focusing on poverty instead of launching satellites. As if science isn’t a way to improving the lot of people. As if science isn’t a way to motivate a new generation of kids. As if all the communications, weather monitoring, and resource management that satellites make possible aren’t ways to improve the place. As if national pride amounts for nothing. As if countries can only focus on one thing at a time. As if western countries fixed all of their social and economic problems before working on technological advances.

Racism has many forms, and this is one. Learn to recognize it and move away from it.

alphakappa··on Ethiopia has launched its first satellite into space
The same reasons any country needs satellites. Telecommunications, resource monitoring, science, weather... Sorry, but unless you believe that satellites are superfluous in general, why are you asking if these countries need satellites? Are they something only rich/western countries need? Or should other countries simply be dependent on the countries that already build/launch them?
alphakappa··on Fast
Nothing wrong in itself. But it is appropriate to wonder about the takeaways. Without proper context and history, the lessons you draw might not be helpful ones.
alphakappa··on Alan Moore on superhero culture
There’s no reason why escapism should only be for kids. There’s plenty of ‘deep’ art in this world, and fantasy escapism isn’t preventing that from existing.
alphakappa··on Why iOS 13 and Catalina Are So Buggy
While this is true, it is a solution for people dedicated to getting a problem fixed. Calling up a support line is a huge barrier, and companies lose out when people cannot file bugs or express their frustration with little issues with ease.
alphakappa··on Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911
Consider that to detect falls reliably, you might need an accelerometer with a higher range than that was in the original watch.
alphakappa··on 3D Ken Burns Effect from a Single Image
The results look impressive. Is the code or a tool available that would enable others to try it out on their images?
alphakappa··on India to Attempt Moon Landing at the Lunar South Pole Today
The problem space of space is infinitely large. Outsourcing some parts mean that you can focus on others. Every space agency and company on Earth do not need to work on the exact same problems, that’s all.
alphakappa··on Tasty Seaweed Reduces Cows’ Methane Emissions by 99%
There are many planet saving discoveries like these. There's also a catch, which is why the planet hasn't been saved yet.

> “If we’re able to work out how to scale up the seaweed to such a level to that can feed all of the cows and the sheep and the goats around the world, then it’s going to have a huge impact on the climate;

And there you go. That's the hard part that you cannot just hand-wave away.

You also have to wonder what the impact of growing all this seaweed (or harvesting it) to feed the planet's bovine population will be. In the end, the problem is due to the massive scale of human consumption on this planet. The mitigation might be just as bad when you consider the scale at which you have to produce the 'better' solution.

alphakappa··on A Conversation with the Team That Made Bread with Ancient Egyptian Yeast
Keep in mind that bread is baked until the internal temperature is usually 205F or so. It should be extremely safe, regardless of what yeast you used.
alphakappa··on What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old?
>Spelling contests have remained a feature in American life since the Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock — but is peaking at 12 years old all it’s cracked up to be?

Whether the settlers landed at Plymouth Rock itself is not known accurately. However, the Puritans didn’t land at whatever became the Plymouth colony. The ones who landed were Separatists (the ones who left the Anglican Church) who called themselves the Pilgrims. The Puritans (ones who stayed in the church to purify it) did arrive in America, but later.

alphakappa··on I made a smart watch from scratch
That is absolutely correct. Figuring out when the watch is in an upright position is trivial. Figuring out whether the user intended to actually get it to turn on is extremely hard, and it involves looking at the history of motion that preceded it, and making judgments based on a whole lot of user data.

The other problem is making the tradeoff between detecting this fast enough (to turn on all the systems that follow so that the screen can light up fast enough) and waiting long enough (so you can be extra sure that the user intended to look at the screen)

The garden path is easy. Making it work mostly unobtrusively is very hard.

alphakappa··on South Korea now recycles 95% of its food waste
Donating your overproduced (and likely subsidized) food to poorer countries also disincentivizes food production there, thereby perpetuating the food shortage problem.
alphakappa··on Norway Is Walking Away from Billions of Barrels of Oil
Let’s not forget that oil is not just used as an energy source. It’s the basis of plastics, drugs, cosmetics and many more things, not all of which have substitutes.
alphakappa··on New study makes link between use of potent cannabis and psychosis
A single study does not make science. It’s a data point but it needs peer review, replication, and consensus after multiple independent studies.

Climate change has scientific consensus from decades of study across the world.

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