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b_b

274 karma · joined July 3, 2018

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b_b··on Nbdev: Use Notebooks for Everything
Literate programming making a comeback! (If it was ever in vogue anyway?)
b_b··on Arcs of Seniority
It's not really time. Seniority here is more of a quality than it is just something determined purely by time. So "Senior Software Developers" are those with some of the correlated skills in the article.
b_b··on Freedom to Compete Act [pdf]
Bit off-topic, but love that the URL is just the straight up path to the file on the Windows machine.
b_b··on Immersive Linear Algebra (2016)
This seems like one of the best uses of computers for educational media, one of the ways digital instruction can really shine through compared to physical text which can often require supplemental videos or help from a teacher to elucidate a concept.

Feels very reminiscent to me of 3B1B videos [1] on topics that use visuals to elucidate math topics more clearly as well.

[1] = https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw

b_b··on Apple fails to block porn and gambling “enterprise” apps
It seems ironic to me that the HN crowd seems to support these circumvention of Apple's insular app distribution strategy, but on the other hand also supports Apple's clamp down on efforts to stop privacy violating apps.

For my part, I guess I would prefer that Apple at least open up iOS devices to both the app store and allowing users to install non-App Store apps, the Android model. This would probably satisfy both casual and more tech-savvy users. Unfortunately, I don't see Apple doing this any time as they are all about profits, and this strategy has been working very well so far.

b_b··on Humaaans: Mix-and-match illustrations of people with a design library
Nice little Daft Punk easter egg in the panel with the "Nothing Found" example page (https://genius.com/Daft-punk-digital-love-lyrics), and the ending statement "We are humaaan after all." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_After_All)
b_b··on Ask HN: How to deal with internet addiction?
For people who use YouTube and would like to remove distractions, I use the simple CSS script below along with the CSS styler extension Stylus to remove distractions and stop me from jumping mindlessly from video to video.

  /* Hide the Distracting Comments */
  #comments {
    display: none;
  }

  /* Hide Livestream Comments */
  #chat {
    display: none;
  }

  /* Hide Related Videos */
  #related {
    display: none;
  }
b_b··on Startup Playbook (2015)
It seems so incredibly generous of this that I caught myself being so cynical as to doubt any ulterior motives at attracting just more companies to YC overall. But it seems to me that these resources and advice are made in earnest, thank you Sam Altman (and Gregory Koberger!) for the contribution of these materials.
b_b··on China sentences Canadian man to death in drug case linked to Huawei row
This man Winston Sterzel [0] has been predicting something like this will happen in China, as they have no tolerance for drugs due to the horrors of the opium crisis.

[0] = https://www.youtube.com/user/serpentza

b_b··on Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do?
I would recommend for you to read and implement the organization/productivity system from Getting Things Done by David Allen [0]. It discusses essentially your main problems of dividing up your life into projects and timing yourself. The system also includes sections for putting some of your ideas in an 'Incubate', basically putting it off for another day once you get through what you have. Having a running list of all your commitments and projects like the system does I think will help you to analyze your time usage and realistic expectations for your productivity and stuff you want to engage in.

[0] = https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Produ...

b_b··on Firefox shows ads for Booking.com in New Tab page
It's not the fact that Mozilla sanitizes or does not sanitize the ads to prevent user tracking. It's the fact that there was never any explicit knowledge that ads like this would even show up on the browser homepage, which violates further trust in Firefox and Mozilla.
b_b··on They paid $100k to ride on Xcor's space plane. Now they want their money back
To clarify any misunderstandings from the title, the people paid but never actually got to fly, so they (fairly) want their money back.
b_b··on Google Has a Plan to Eliminate Mosquitoes
Instead of the sarcasm, please elaborate on the harmful effects of complete mosquito removal (those that carry diseases) from the ecosystem. These bugs cause an immense number of death and suffering every year, and eliminating them seems a good solution in that it removes the carrier of the diseases, eliminating the disease without having to worry about finding cures and expanding health care access in a lot of the impoverished places where these diseases strike the hardest.
b_b··on North, Thalmic's Secret Smart Glasses Play
The facebook/linkedin AR, personally, does not sound so exciting... feels far too dystopian to me.
b_b··on Madoko – a fast markdown processor for writing professional documents
While these web-app things may be nice for quickly trying out these programs, for actual long-term use on my machine and workflow besides all of the other programs, they don't stand up to the test unless they are truly revolutionary and needed.
b_b··on John McCain has died
Here goes sadly one of the last remaining examples of a respectful and dignified politician, no matter the political party of the other.
b_b··on Google tried to change China, but China may end up changing Google
The funny thing is, even if Google does go back into business in China, it won't be long before its IP and servers are looted in exchange for the bolstering of native Chinese businesses. Where's the long-term vision on this one?
b_b··on YC China and Qi Lu
This is some serious whataboutism. Our government may have done horrible things, but that doesn't justify China's in any way either.
b_b··on YC China and Qi Lu
I don't think it's too cynical given this move at this point. They have willingly entered into a market where corporations are sponsored for their loyalty to the state, which has done horrendous humanitarian crimes, without which they could have succeeded economically just as well. Seems to me any semblance of a soul has been lost here in favor of pure VC profits.
b_b··on Chemists discover how blue light speeds blindness
For many of us whose use of these blue-light emitting computer and phone screens is necessary, what can we do about it?
b_b··on The Weight of Numbers: Air Pollution and PM2.5
I'd recommend anyone who would like to clean the air of the home to use products from SmartAir [1] which is as inexpensive as just a fan attached to a filter, both of which they sell (although you can just buy the filter by itself and attach it to a fan you already own). I visited their office in China and received a complementary filter, which when installed in my hotel room in Beijing, definitely cleared the air and there was a noticeable difference from such a simple mechanism. Recommended for both price and effectiveness.

[1] = https://smartairfilters.com/cn/en/?r=global

b_b··on Show HN: Extension to highlight and tag users on Hacker News
I would think that would be generally harmful for the point of thoughtful discussion as you are essentially labeling a person from the get-go with a certain bias.
b_b··on Facebook Field Guide to Machine Learning – video series
One example would be the automatic face detection of people that were not originally tagged in uploaded photos.
b_b··on Thunderbird 60.0 release
Yeah, unfortunately I don't have Linux (only WSL but I doubt that would really compare since I don't use the GUI environments avilable), so I don't know whether upgrading like this will be safe. I'd personally wait until they the repository developers bring it in, since there's no guarantee of what might happen.
b_b··on Thunderbird 60.0 release
If you are on verions<52, just know that this update won't be shown on the "About Thunderbird" page that checks for updates.

I was just in the same situation, and simply downloaded the installer from their main webpage [1] (after backing up my data in my profiles folder[2] and closing any running instances of Thunderbird), and it simply worked! I have to say, at least on Windows, the update looks much better, feels quite refreshing! Almost makes me want to actually check all the new emails :)

[1] = https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/ [2] = https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderb...

b_b··on China's Peer-To-Peer Lenders Are Falling Like Dominoes as Panic Spreads
I believe Grameen Bank deployed in Bangladesh [1] is an innovative and effective example of one way to solve some of these problems.

[1] = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grameen_Bank

b_b··on Police accused of deploying facial recognition 'by stealth' in London
The article says that the police had pledged to notify people of its use in the areas using leaflets and such, but failed to do so even when deploying the technology, so this is why it is labeled as secrecy.
b_b··on How did Google get so big?
The point of antitrust regulations is to stop the anti-innovation practices in the first place, so while they may appear to be a 'benevolent dictator,' they will quickly turn for the worse.
b_b··on Show HN: CSS Scan – Instantly check or copy computed CSS from any element
I think it's due to its enterprise users and customer bases, and never underestimate the power of legacy code base inertia that often keep these types of things going.
b_b··on A learning platform to teach the Ada and SPARK programming languages
Ask nearly any Latin student nowadays and they'll mention that they have used or frequently still use Whitaker's Words [1] which is made in Ada [2]. I and my friends in Latin class use it so frequently (through the University of Notre Dame portal) that I made a reskin for me and some friends [3] to use so we can enter in all the words we want for a passage and to look at convenient conjugation cheatsheets :)

[1] = http://www.archives.nd.edu/words.html [2] = https://github.com/mk270/whitakers-words [3] = https://abidsikder.com/wweb/index.html

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