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benmcnelly

311 karma · joined February 28, 2014

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/benmcnelly; my proof: https://keybase.io/benmcnelly/sigs/lw43fwEJW3fvmKM1VAzFTC5Z_LbqG56QNnd15HJisww ]
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benmcnelly··on [dead]
It was slow / having issues as in the afternoon, but my last deployment was 6:59pm CST, and it at least responded at 7:43pm CST with a failed deployment. Between those time blocks the entire thing went down. Sites are up, but you can't authenticate with the CLI tools, or get a log in / dashboard with web.
benmcnelly··on [dead]
Radio silence from heroku as far as I can tell...
benmcnelly··on Scientists pull living microbes, possibly 100M years old, from beneath the sea
Do you want zombies, this is how you get zombies... /kidding of course(mostly)!
benmcnelly··on Adobe Summit Cancelled
So will you now be a terrible company if you host a summit/expo/large-gathering? If that is the trend it could really bite into some of the economies tied into cities used to hosting events.
benmcnelly··on Qt for Android better than ever before
That is great, love it how sometimes things like this are stumbled upon by working outside what you are used to.
benmcnelly··on Welding breakthrough could transform manufacturing
I would love to see some pictures.
benmcnelly··on WiPhone: A professionally-packaged Arduino phone
Love the idea (ish) and the form factor, I am a firm believer that a small and thinner (width not depth) form factor will be the future of phones until the next big leap, so a lot like this form factor, but with the ability to throw some LTE hardware in here and make a phone you can slap any pay as you go SIM in, I just wonder why not?

Btw this is not the future: https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/ezgif-4-fb...

benmcnelly··on WiPhone: A professionally-packaged Arduino phone
Asking the real questions here.
benmcnelly··on Show HN: Spase.io – A new kind of planner
After sign up the login link you get emailed seems to have an API key in it, but doesn't log you in.
benmcnelly··on Google terminated our business via our Google Play Developer Account
We got one of our app taken down and a strike on our account, warning that further strikes are going to mean no more developer account. We wanted to re-upload and try to find what the problem was but with no human contact ever able to be made, we had to settle for not doing the app over losing all of our other ones.
benmcnelly··on Quantum computing as a field is obvious bullshit
Right, much like discussing political maters, when discussing important things; compassion and easily digestible chunks of information go farther. It's OK to be passionate and certainly OK to call things out, but for the most part I think the only people who are able to look past the rhetoric are people who already agree with its position.
benmcnelly··on A Woman's Rights
I don't see anything. Is there a non subscription way to read about this?
benmcnelly··on New Raspberry Pi Model B+
So many more options now, already have a few ideas in mind.
benmcnelly··on A handbook of Ethiopian magic incantations and talisman art
Alright, I fed this into our machine learning engine, now what?
benmcnelly··on ‘I forgot my PIN’: An epic tale of losing $30,000 in bitcoin
I don't read wired, so not sure if my story is similar, but I have a damage hard drive with 30+ coins on it. It may be worth trying a little harder to restore it...
benmcnelly··on Google signs agreement with HTC
Half Life 3 confirmed!
benmcnelly··on CRISPR used to genetically modify viable human embryos for the first time
Yeah, its reminding me more of the ones with bad ending though.
benmcnelly··on Notepad++ V 7.3.3 – Fix CIA Hacking Notepad++ Issue
(¬‿¬) this guy
benmcnelly··on Rabbit hole leads to 700-year-old Knights Templar cave
They should have waited till April first to publish this, so people would think its a Monty Python reference :p
benmcnelly··on Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
I have some facts for you. I hate passive aggressive pop overs that take over a page and then try and make you feel bad for not signing up. Also, against my better judgment I continued to try and read this. It was trash so let me offer some advice that at the least should be equally as subjective.

A good frame of mind or world view to have, is to be open to the possibility that you don't know everything. That we are in a constant state of figuring things out and ratifying what we know, and accept that at some point, if we are tolerant and listen, we may learn something new. Hell, maybe modal window hijacks ARE the best way to try and get people to subscribe.

benmcnelly··on Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds
This was a scientific experiment. Fact.
benmcnelly··on Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up?
Its more like a crash course on putting other before yourself, which can for sure adjust ones world view.
benmcnelly··on Scrimba: a video format for communicating code
Thats great!
benmcnelly··on Scrimba: a video format for communicating code
I think its because they use github for storage/forking things, but they could certainly extend it to work without it later.
benmcnelly··on Scrimba: a video format for communicating code
Man this is good. Any plans to extend it to other languages?
benmcnelly··on CIA malware and hacking tools
Thats how you know the leak is real, because this is classic internal Wiki shenanigans, you can't make this up. Also, though there are some talented people working here (you can identify some of their github accounts, thanks to wikileaks tying users to their posts by ID) but I think a LOT of these tools are made/stolen/purchased from elsewhere..
benmcnelly··on Google featured snippets are worse than fake news
Sorry, I assumed a lot of things there I think. I gathered from what you were saying that you were falling with the popular opinion that Google should filter out "fake news" from its search results (or at least the focused results). So from that perspective, I was trying to draw parallels on how silly it is to demand such a thing.
benmcnelly··on Google featured snippets are worse than fake news
They have been pretty clear about their goal to have search respond to you as humanly as possible and use AI not just algorithms to find things for you, and I think they have been clear on where they are getting the data they dig up on things.
benmcnelly··on Google featured snippets are worse than fake news
You don't have to convince me that Google has intentionally led people to become more reliant on them, that is their business model, where user is the product and Google becoming as integral to your day to day life as possible is important; as their business model is literally "people use us the most and we know them better so advertise to them through us".

But I think we should have a clear divide between responsibility of the user and the content aggregates. Just like with editorial news and Journalism we of course can differentiate between the two, and there are ethics and integrity issues we should hold news outlets to, but we need to be careful of confusing a search engine with a news outlet just because people use it to find news and facts from various places. That does not make them arbitrators of the truth. The responsibility lies on the end user to use their judgment and wisdom and research to come to informed decisions. And the responsibility lies on the news agency to report factual things. Google just needs to help me find relevant information, and let me decide what is good ethical journalism and what is fictional drivel.

You might think "But doesn't that mean that anyone can scream as loudly as they want and people will hear them and might listen to them?" Well yes it does. And it seems like everyone here has a problem with that, because they think people have terrible common sense. People have been trying to sway public opinion through media since there was written word. But you should criticize the work of the book author, or maybe even the publisher who is constantly publishing crappy books, but not the book store or library who is just helping you find whatever you are looking for no matter who you are or what you like.

I don't think you people know what you are asking for when you want to put it in peoples heads that because someone or something is popular or used by many people it somehow has a responsibility to curate the truth.

benmcnelly··on Google featured snippets are worse than fake news
Sure it does, one of the most effective forms of provoking thought is satire.

People just don't like it when you don't think the way everyone else is thinking.

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