Hacker News Reader

atombathon Inside the Chicago Police Department’s secret budget

Shown here are two good reasons for why people don't respect the police anymore. They take your assets due to a subtle association to a crime. They spend it without oversight on tools of mass surveillance. Ultimately, both of these things exacerbate crime. Quite an occupying force nowadays.

atombathon Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

Engineers are respected for their ingenuity, intelligence, real-world problem-solving, studious determination, maybe even grit. These skills are on the opposite spectrum from vanity skills(presentation, socializing, marketing), which unfortunately are at the core of gendered expectations for girls. Since engineering skills actually reflect a depth of the holder(especially in our vanity driven world), they implicitly demand more respect. Really, more professional females in engineering is the only way forward for current gender issues. I would argue it's the same battle that must be fought to combat racism as well.

atombathon Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech

Good on her. My regular disagreement w my feminist friends is their SJW stuff does them more harm than good and the only way forward is our having more female engineers. Clearly then, I think this initiative is really tackling the core of gender issues.

atombathon Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

Not sure how wood it fit in their business plan

atombathon Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

Twitter is also pretty heavy-handed on its censorship of US politics. For instance by blacklisting trending topics such as #WhichHillary when it had gained momentum. (when the protester went to her event with the quote about 'super predators' + #WhichHillary on a banner)

atombathon Akamai takes Brian Krebs’ site off its servers after ‘record’ cyberattack

It's kind of stupid to me that the massive and advanced cdn of akamai protect something as non-important as a blog against such a major ddos attack. If they were doing it pro-bono wouldn't the prudent action be to mitigate ddos's until a certain treshold and then actually assess the value of what you are protecting? A good lesson to have learned, I believe.

But no, they'll drop this client which had to have continually given good referrals.

atombathon 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

Ignoring everything else, Mr. Robot builds a spectacular atmosphere, which is an almost impossible task in television. This show is wonderful. I'd say it competes with Game of Thrones on quality and it's my favorite show right now.

They get the technical details right enough to earn respect. Sometimes you need to give artistic freedom to the writing as long as it doesn't devolve into a graphic of Pacman eating data. Gives you some meaningless pride when you see a protagonist empty a can of Pringles into the trash, knowing exactly what they are doing.

If someone has a problem with the series, my natural reaction at this point is that they're pretentious... it's not fair but imo really that's what all the criticism has boiled down to:

You noticed the heavily telegraphed twist? Good job! Gold star for you!

You're going to criticize a show with such wonderful atmosphere building for having long episodes? Wow, your time must be really important!

He uses the wrong text editor or Linux flavor? You must be a master, could you please fix my iPad?

The characters are flawed or mercurial? Could you please elaborate on the strengths of two-dimensional characters?

atombathon Researchers quantum teleport particle of light six kilometres

Awesome. So a quantum network would have the photon act as a data stream, in a way it would act like a physical security key. So with a lot of work, this would be amazing for 1:1 communications. But what if I want to send my dick pick to hundreds of people at once(1:100 distribution)? Is it possible to entangle one photon with multiple?

atombathon Deutsche Bank to fight $14B demand from U.S. authorities

If we don't know their names then how do we know they're no longer there?

atombathon Play-by-Play: Trying to make it as a sports commentator

If this guy loves being an announcer to the point that they'll do kid's soccer or hockey, why not try announcing for something like esports? I'm surprised more pro's haven't seen the opportunity and moved into it.

atombathon Play-by-Play: Trying to make it as a sports commentator

One day I had turned on the television and found a MLB game as an interim choice while I found something else to watch. I didn't know, but my center channel's wiring had gone loose from moving speakers around. There were no announcers and it was so... wonderful. It was peaceful and I'll even say it was relaxing. For the first time in my life I enjoyed professional baseball... and kept it on. Ever since, I wonder why providers don't offer announcer muting.

atombathon I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area

Definitely. Also, getting a new car that prioritizes reliability is a smart move as well. The author didn't do this though. A nice(imo) new car can be had for less than ~$25k and his $40k tells me he wanted something a little more flashy. I agree these overextended purchases usually come down to someone's ego getting in the way. A direct consequence of our "what you buy defines you" culture.

atombathon I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area

I guess I'll respond everywhere you tried to make this point. A $40k car will likely come with a 5yr loan that's cheaper than student loans. That'd actually be $8k/yr+interest... which is not 40% of your salary. Find something else to judge the guy for.

atombathon I made 6 figures at my Facebook dream job – but couldn't afford the Bay Area

Does no one here buy cars? I forgive you. A $40k car will likely come with a 5yr loan that's cheaper than student loans. That'd actually be $8k/yr+interest... which is not 40% of your salary. Find something else to judge the guy for.

atombathon Soaring Student Debt Prompts Calls for Relief

Of course a tax percentage of a value is going to be less than the value. The main penalty would be the tanking of your credit rating. The effect it would have on an interest rate for future loans would be very significant.

atombathon Soaring Student Debt Prompts Calls for Relief

I assume if forgiveness ever occurred, it would need to be respected as income for the debtor(so then IRS gets involved) simply to prevent fraud. Much in the same way that charge-offs are currently taxable income(1099-C).

There's simply no way that you will want to forgive the student debt... so pay them off if you can! The punishments of 'forgiveness' simply have to outweigh the benefits or the system will be gamed until broken.

atombathon Soaring Student Debt Prompts Calls for Relief

I understand that feeling... I'm nearing the end of my loans and dropped $3k on one of them yesterday. I would have rather had a vacation if it's just going to vanish!

...but don't get salty because the debt won't vanish. I have no doubt that if an education loan is forgiven, it WILL affect that persons credit rating. Much like when a debt is forgiven/charged-off. Also, charge-offs are typically treated as a form of taxable income... so these people will pay one way or the other, and likely take a long-time credit rating hit.

atombathon Google's de-radicalization program for extremists

Satiate your curiosity while you still can!

www.chemtrailsaredemonic.org

atombathon Google's de-radicalization program for extremists

Censorship? Not really. You were close though, it's targeted propaganda.

atombathon Google's de-radicalization program for extremists

Very interesting. I was wondering when the internet would get some smart propaganda. Never thought it'd come through third-party cookies but it makes sense given the pervasive networks. Their identifiers are as powerful as SSNs at this point.

Screw ISIS and abortion-center bombers obviously, but how far will this be taken? How great would it be if a climate group changed all the ads on a republican website to point to facts? What if the opposite occurred? =/ In the end this is a worrisome capability. Luckily, Google promises to do no evil! (/s)

We've officially reached the point that if I check out some crazy conspiracy theories I'm on an (advertising) targeting list.

atombathon 5,300 Wells Fargo employees fired for creating over 2M phony accounts

I'm not sure who I can trust more, the salesman or the banker. =(

(I work at a bank and I'm a little jealous of the guy who left to work at the sausage factory... because at least they understand engineering processes.)

atombathon We’re in the Middle of a Data Engineering Talent Shortage

bullets =)

atombathon How Google obliterated my 4 year old Chrome extension featuring 24k+ users

Devil's advocate: it isn't in Google's interest to give you legal advice.

atombathon Researchers Confront an Epidemic of Loneliness

1) I grew up a solitary person in what felt like the middle of nowhere and have always been force-fed that 'humans are social creatures' adage when people can't understand when I say I am not lonely. With the internet and improvements to independent-agency, I think we're beginning to see how anti-social humans really are. Existing alone, I do feel bored once in a while... but not lonely.

2) I believe many-if-not-most people surround themselves with others in order to improve their feelings about themselves. For instance many people jump from one relationship to another and as a result they never spend time with themselves, so they never learn who they are. I imagine that these people really do feel a crippling sense of loneliness... because it's the well they've been pulling self-worth from for their entire lives.

3) The article references how men are unlikely to call into a phone line for a sense of community and theorizes that it is likely because they're shouldering the burden. More likely that it's because talking to a complete stranger and asking about each other's day is superficial and/or vain. The wood shop is a much better/cooler idea... as learning a new hobby is a good way to get with new people.

atombathon When they don’t want new jobs, just more money

Sorry but in my experience, your instincts are correct. Smart managers who will give you the serious market-correction bumps do exist but they rarely exist. Even then, you will need to have undoubted value in order to leverage a serious bump, as they will have people above them that will fight it.

In my experience, you will have to jump from job to job in order to get incremental salary increases, since yearly increases are not only shallow but percentage based(so lower salaries receive lower increases.)

I've seen many companies that attempt to thrive on lower earners, who are typically straight out of college. It's a successful cost-cutting measure that works until their products turn to shit.

atombathon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (September 2016)

  Location: Detroit, MI 
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: Yes, please. WA/OR/CO preferred.
  Technologies: (MSFT stack) C#/.Net, SQL Server, JS/jQuery
  Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-casteel-43171a59
  Email: LeviathanSource@gmail.com

atombathon Doreen Valiente: The story of the mother of modern witchcraft

Everyone needs to find or invent terminology and tools to help define the elements(including the mystical and undefinable) of their existence. At least she and people like her are/were courageous enough to throw away the old tool set in order to define something for themselves.

atombathon Legislation would restrict H-1B visas

Well it sounds like with all those advantages that India is in a prime position to start building software solutions at 1/4 the cost that western countries would charge! Good luck, guys!

atombathon Nike.com's robots.txt file

Not even disallowing crappy crawlers like majestic 12? They're going to scuff your Jordans!

atombathon Commission says Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13B to Apple

If they did so, there would be tariffs from their client nations. Then they'd bribe the tariff countries... which is what they're doing now, anyways. So why go through all the trouble of owning a country?