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bmpafa

775 karma · joined January 2, 2016

email: hn@brandon.sh
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bmpafa··on Victor Mono – A free programming font
Also from FAQ :

> A programming font with cursive italics and ligatures is the worst idea in the world. This is absolutely horrible. BTW, I am really angry.

> [Answer:] Not really a question, but anyway: People actually like different things. And it's OK. It's OK if someone else prefers a different font for code than you do. We don't have to use the same one. ️

(though obv. parent post is not hostile like this Q)

bmpafa··on Victor Mono – A free programming font
From the OP's section titled "Why?" :

> When it comes to programming fonts, I prefer something strict, readable and relatively condensed for the code proper, complemented with a more informal, flowing and human style for things like comments and reserved keywords.

bmpafa··on Dark Mode for Slack
I think it's a fashion thing with a thin veneer of eye strain reduction (since, AFAIK, there's little conclusive evidence dark mode matters here)
bmpafa··on Largest Study of Its Kind Identifies Health Benefits of Fasting
This is one of my favorite features of Soylent and the like. If I drink 2-3 bottles a day, I know I can have one avg sized meal and/or snack and still be under a reasonable daily calorie ceiling.

though it definitely doesn't solve your limited menu point, I've always found getting 70% or so of my calories from soylent to be way more sustainable than eating the same regular foods every day.

bmpafa··on Engineers: Do you read company blogs? Which ones are good?
For non-technical: I've always thought Buffer[0] and Hubspot[1] were fantastic resources for SEO, marketing, etc. Hubspot even writes extensively on how to write content for SEO/SEM, which is sort of meta.

For technical: Stripe[2] is a popular answer to this question. I also like Auth0[3], especially b/c they often have content that isn't just meant to market their services (eg this tutorial on k8s[4])

[0]: https://buffer.com/resources/

[1]: https://blog.hubspot.com/

[2]: https://stripe.com/blog/engineering

[3]: https://auth0.com/blog/

[4]: https://auth0.com/blog/kubernetes-tutorial-step-by-step-intr...

bmpafa··on M.B.A. Applications Decline at Harvard, Wharton, Other Elite Schools
To clarify, my calcs included the lost salary (by far the biggest cost for most ppl)
bmpafa··on M.B.A. Applications Decline at Harvard, Wharton, Other Elite Schools
got my MBA, _then_ learned to code while trying to build a startup, so became 'technical' and 'managerial' at about the same time.

I think my MBA taught me how to view the business at a systems level. When you consider the various financial and performance metrics that managers look at, a business is just another engineering problem.

w/o the MBA, I'm not sure when I would've learned that way of thinking.

bmpafa··on M.B.A. Applications Decline at Harvard, Wharton, Other Elite Schools
I run an MBA admissions site on the side and did some analysis on this.

tl;dr if you are confident an MBA can create a step increase in annual comp of even $10k, the cost is more than covered over the remainder of your career.

bmpafa··on Linus, His Apology, and Why We Should Support Him
Isn't that most of opinion journalism, period, since forever?
bmpafa··on Bernie Sanders Intros ‘Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (BEZOS)’ Bill
The best example of this imo is the "USA PATRIOT" act, or:

"Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism"

bmpafa··on Firefox axes add-ons, developer pushes back
title is a little clickbait-y. Firefox didn't "axe add-ons" (ie, the add-ons isn't going away):

> Mozilla has wiped 23 extensions from its directory of Firefox browser add-ons after finding what it says were inappropriate functions in the code.

bmpafa··on Association between physical exercise and mental health: a cross-sectional study
Auto bill pay is a boon.

Hire a tax preparer. It costs more than doing it yourself, but I find we often discount the cognitive cost of just doing a thing when considering whether to outsource stuff.

In other words, build / use systems to minimize the impact of your own limitations on your responsibilities.

bmpafa··on The U.S. Air Force learned to code and saved the Pentagon millions
AF vet, and frequently frustrated by this taboo. It's so contrary to the interests of everyone except the employer, but folks become visibly uncomfortable whenever talk of comp comes up.

Well, the American folks anyway. I work with a lot of Europeans, and they don't seem to share the norm.

bmpafa··on The Repeal of Net Neutrality Is Official
Saying a curtailment of federal authority is necessarily a good thing makes you sound like an ideologue.

Government isn't intrinsically good or bad, and there is no ideal amount of it. Case by case we should decide when the public's interests are served by having a voice in a marketplace besides the money we spend.

bmpafa··on Un-Teaching Personal Responsibility
I find this "personal responsibility" narrative interesting (and, full disclosure: also bullshit), since it reminds me of sports discussions--everyone has a strong opinions, they're nearly all un-falsifiable, and they almost always appeal to notions that no one disagrees with.

i.e., no one actually thinks that actions ought not have consequences. Arne Duncan et al weren't trying to 'un-teach discipline' or whatever, they were trying to address secondary problems around discipline.

I love Google's ngram viewer for context here. Use of the phrase "personal responsibility" _skyrocketed_ around the late 80s[1], more or less matching the rise of the right-wing "bootstraps" narrative.

During the period covered in the ngram viewer (late 80s to 2000), the number of people in American prisons more than doubled[2]. In fact, it continued to rise precipitously until--you guessed it--circa 2008, where it finally plateaued (after more than tripling since 1988).

So, I dunno, maybe this is my bleeding heart talking, but if "unteaching personal responsibility" means "putting fewer people in prison," sign me up for the next lesson.

1: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22personal+re...

2: https://sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Tre...

bmpafa··on Ask HN: Any resources to learn the fundamentals of critical thinking?
The highest roi I ever found for critical thinking enhancement was LSAT prep.

Specifically, the logical reasoning section has you evaluate a series of arguments and answer (often tricky) questions about the argument--analogizing, finding flaws, etc.

Formal books etc are fine, but if this were programming, I'd say dive in and write code. Imo LSAT prep is the 'write code' in this instance.

bmpafa··on Observations running 2M headless sessions
head(less)s up: the links in the footer of your docs are busted. it looks like they all point to an `/en/` route but the actual URLs include no such tier.
bmpafa··on Books No Woman Should Read
He is the leader of the lower chamber of the U.S. Congress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ryan

My guess is he's being singled out because many (esp. on the left) view him as intellectually disingenuous. He came to prominence as a 'thought leader,' leaning heavily on Ayn Rand's objectivism to inform his 'small government' politics.

ETA: actually, it's more likely the author thinks Ryan's preferred policies are cruel, not that he's disingenuous.

bmpafa··on Fund Managers Are Ditching Wall Street for Florida
Any takes on what FL's incentive is here? With no state income tax, and with the relatively modest # of people employed by funds, why target investment funds?
bmpafa··on Ready for Production Apps: Flutter Beta 3
I view the absence of JSX as a liability. I like flutter, but I find a lot of the syntax to feel 'different for the sake of different.'
bmpafa··on Bypassing website anti-scraping protections
As I understand it, this was the rationale behind the courts' decision to prohibit LinkedIn from banning people from scraping public profiles.

Basically it was anti competitive to grant certain privileges to major players around 'public data,' but to block smaller players.

No telling if/when ramifications from that decision (last year) hit existing anti scraping measures, though.

bmpafa··on Bye, Chrome: Why I’m switching to Firefox
(I use FF developer edition and chrome, but not chromium)

I find Firefox Dev tools to be a bit nicer,esp. the network tab. Firefox also has a few experimental features that are okay, but the fact that they're experimenting is worth something (eg the JavaScript scratchpad feature).

bmpafa··on Bye, Chrome: Why I’m switching to Firefox
The reader view is really something. One of those things I necer thought about til I used it, now I miss it whenever I'm in chrome.
bmpafa··on Tax-Free Storage Wars
This reminds me of something I read once about pain reliever marketing. 'no other pain reliever acts faster' == 'they all act exactly the same speed'

Lies, damn lies, damn damn lies, and marketing.

bmpafa··on Walmart will begin offering to subsidize college tuition for its U.S. workers
This is something that bothers me every time I read about a wealthy person/biz doing something for the working poor.

It's not that I don't appreciate the actions, it's that I'm uncomfortable with the idea that oligarchy means working people are beholden to an unaccountable group of affluents. It's like we're outsourcing the government's responsibility for collective welfare.

bmpafa··on De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds
If I ever decide to propose to someone, I'm citing you on this point.
bmpafa··on Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims
I understand your intent and I'm not suggesting you oughta do anything differently, but I am not sure how net good it is that older devs' labor is being sold at a discount.

My understanding is that silicon valley hasn't cured aging yet, so until that happens, this seems like yet another market distortion that favors employers at the expense of labor (or 'YAMDTFEAEL' for short)

bmpafa··on Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims
This is probably a myth, but I've heard Kerouac wrote On the Road practically in a single sitting thanks to the peppy magic of Benzedrine, aka Bennies, a _widely_ available inhalant & pill form of amphetamine.
bmpafa··on Good design for Humans
I've never understood the 'for humans' bit, though I see it all the time.

Is it a backhanded insult? Ie is the tacit point that design which doesn't follow whatever guidelines is therefore not built 'for humans'?'

bmpafa··on How ‘Authentic Relating’ Made Vulnerability a Movement (2017)
https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability
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