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crate_barreon How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London

Plus any multi billionaire can have world class chefs on retainer.

crate_barreon How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

The funny thing is that while that number sounds like a lot, it would only be about 900 houses in places like Cali and NY.

crate_barreon How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London

What is life at those wealth numbers? Anywhere you go would be the same lifestyle. Granted you’d need to be a lot more underground in Dubai but I’m sure they can figure out how to get coke and high end escorts and hang out on boat off the gulf coast. Ditch all all the alcohol in the ocean and head back like a good Muslim, no questions asked.

crate_barreon Deno 1.20

It won’t take long to get it popping. You just need a few tech blog posts from well known startup with a headline that reads ‘How we switched from Node to Deno’, and voila, the snowball just got rolling.

Copy cat culture will do the rest.

crate_barreon Deno Is Webby

Sometimes it takes a discussion, I’m not in the business of upvoting or downvoting :p

crate_barreon Deno Is Webby

I guess thats my main deal breaker. It’s simply another foot gun to allow people to over abstract. I have no issues with modest typing, it’s nice, it’s clear. I have issues with what entropy inevitably does.

crate_barreon Deno Is Webby

"your Redux reducer doesn't handle all of the possible action types so it will crash at run time"

And what are all these dr. Strange multiverse possibilities you speak of? Any semi seasoned JS dev has spidey sense for watching out for null and undefined, and generally you should know the type of what you are returning. Is there that much variability in what you are dealing with? If it’s an array of objects, that’s not hard to hold in your brain, just watch out for empty arrays or null/undefined items.

crate_barreon Deno Is Webby

Look, this is going to back and forth. Take a time machine to pre Web 2.0 and explain to everyone why OOP programming sucks. I’d dare you to take it off your resume. But we’re here now right?

It’s not hard for me to imagine the reversal of this trend inevitably where everyone goes ‘the fuck are we writing all these verbose types for this dumb web app for?’.

crate_barreon Deno Is Webby

Some part of me wonders if they wrote some clear optimizations for defined types that translate easily to Rust. I could give two shits about types honestly, but I’m also one of those weirdos that keeps function arity low, and object definitions concise.

How did people write semi elegant Ruby or python all these years, why wasn’t there such a massive push for types in those languages? Most likely because backend people chose the backend language of their choice, but on the frontend they detested JavaScript (you have no choice, you must JavaScript you anti authoritarian shit heads) so much they had to drown it with some kind of ketchup to make it edible (Typescript).

crate_barreon Ask HN: Is China the Next Superpower?

They have the largest market to sell to in the world, and the largest production capacity and infrastructure. By sheer numbers their market will be more lucrative than the US, and even if US beefs up manufacturing, China is just ahead in terms of that investment and still have cheaper labor.

I can’t see how you beat that combination unless our most forward industries take it up a notch (tech, medical, defense). Hollywood, gaming, social media (TikTok) have already shown that China can be a leader in that front.

They haven’t taken over just yet, but the rate of growth makes this whole question boil down to a matter of time.

Defense might be the one thing we will always be ahead of them on for awhile. There will be a day in the future where the US will have to accept its new role as an advanced country that is the not the driving global force (the Britains, Japans, Germanys).

Of course, we could always lax our immigration policies and double our population, in which case we have chance.

crate_barreon Ask HN: Alternative ways to move a dog, human, and some baggage overseas?

I’d throw in that cruise prices are probably as low as they’ll ever be also. I’m curious myself how a cruise works. It seems like US to Europe is 700-1500 per person, and it makes stops at a few ports in Europe.

What Visa do you have? Will they allow you to leave at the first port or is that against Cruise policy? If they let you get off, then just have a hotel booked at that destination. Settle for a days and then book the train to your final destination.

Last but not least, it’s not hard to get your pet designated an emotional support animal. People do this very easily in apartments that have no pet policy. If you can get that, then just take a flight.

crate_barreon Zelensky video deepfake

It was on the back of my mind, I remember hearing this :p

crate_barreon Zelensky video deepfake

It’s more frustration than elitism. Take the topic of Machine Learning for example, there’s really few people on planet earth that can discuss the implications of it in detail. To broaden membership into that discussion, you have to provide a lifeline in the context of ‘what are the implications of AI with respect to future work, will humanity ever have to work again?’ - ok, now most people can take part.

The frustration is, why is gossip and conspiracy lifelines necessary for topics that most people should have no issue discussing? You really can’t add anything without that stuff?

Anyways, I heard Hunter Biden is a drug addict, and Putin has cancer, and that’s why he’s invading Ukraine.

crate_barreon Ask HN: Is it normal to be ghosted for senior position job interviews?

You want me to make up something nice to make everyone’s day delightful? I didn’t make this world.

crate_barreon Ask HN: Is it normal to be ghosted for senior position job interviews?

My gut sense is they picked a range of experiences to interview and you filled the senior end of the spectrum. They most likely let you audition as the most senior candidate and if you aren’t overwhelmingly senior in their minds, they will stall and just kinda go back and forth between the junior and mid level candidate. But they wanted to survey all options.

Sorry about that, that’s just kind of how it works. It’s like looking at Expensive House A, Budget Nice House B, and Potential Cheap House C. Check out all three before deciding.

No matter what you hear about it being a hot job market, always know that it’s the company that gets the luxury of shopping around, not the candidate. It’s still a buyers market.

crate_barreon Zelensky video deepfake

Information dissemination must be similar to fluid dynamics. It just has to be.

It’s simpler and more insidious than that. I’ll use the old Eleanor Roosevelt quote:

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."

Most people are not that intellectual and probably spent most of their life gossiping. They wouldn’t know how to even discuss certain topics if the low hanging fruit of gossip and conspiracy wasn’t available to them to add something in a social interaction.

Take Reddit for example, some of them wouldn’t even know what to say if they couldn’t add that one immediate punch line (followed by sequential punchlines by other people). If you take this away, they will literally have no way of joining the convo.

They won’t be able to come up with an angle, ask a probing question, entertain an alternative perspective, provide analogues or metaphors, they’d simply have no voice. It’s akin to providing these people with ‘what do you think about the weather today?’ as a lifeline in casual social interaction.

crate_barreon Ask HN: Does being single hurt your productivity?

It depends on the person. Me personally, I get extremely comfortable in a relationship. When I’m single, I get really focused on goals. I used to have little to no goals once in a relationship, it’s just too relaxing. The other person can bring food, or you can, just have sex all day, take a day off, go somewhere, you just kind of get lulled into this somewhat hedonistic carefree life.

But when you are single, you sort of shift back into get shit done mode.

Depends on the person(s)(both of you can really get too comfortable in the situation).

crate_barreon Cities should not pay for new stadiums

I just don’t think that’s realistic. We have all this commotion over dissolving student debt, but amongst minorities, they are saddled with all kinds of other debts.

Dissolve that. Give credit score amnesty. Those house loans will be flying off the shelves if we ever did that.

But nah, let’s focus on the guys that majored in Trombone or Classics at a private school for 25k a year.

It’s technically cheaper for tax payers since credit defaults are usually sold to collections for pennies on the dollar. That seems way more affordable, and gives a proper tabula rasa (versus a 1000 stimulus check). We’ll just subsidize the collections payments which usually settle for way less anyway, and just free people up. We should technically do the same for student debt. Have these dumbass schools send the debt to collections, and we’ll pay the stupid 10 cents on the dollar. Fuck off and never over charge again. Why would we actually pay off the full ridiculous amount?

crate_barreon Cities should not pay for new stadiums

We’re more susceptible to the narrative in which these stadiums used to get funding (now days more so is my meaning). Goes something like this:

- You have poor shitty neighborhoods

- Subsidize building of a stadium in said shithole, and watch the dollars come in.

- You’ll have increased commerce and development of surrounding area with ample employment for said shitty neighborhood residents.

We don’t need recent history to post mortem this, they figured out it actually doesn’t improve the region much a long time ago.

———

The only thing that reasonably works is gentrification, but, well, you know … that’s racist. How do you solve it? I don’t know, white people seem to have the money. We have to start much higher up to root cause analyze this, and while I’m annoyed by wokeness, root causing this kind of more or less leads us to ‘why the fuck are there so many white people with money’?.

Anyways, stadiums. It’s just a bug way down the ladder.

Have fun going to Yankee Stadium in the middle of the fucking South Bronx. Utopian shit never works.

crate_barreon Cities should not pay for new stadiums

It’s also like the first topic covered in Urban Studies 101 for like 20 years. Weirdly, most of America needs to just take a basic Urban Studies course to fix half our culture issues.

crate_barreon Why I Prefer Makefiles over Package.json Scripts

What in god’s name is pnpm?

crate_barreon CEO demanded all employees return full-time to the office. Only half showed up

Yeah, half those people probably love putting on a dress shirt and feeling fancy about walking into a Goldman office. The thing is, it just takes a toll on you long term.

This battle is not rooted in those who like remote and those who don’t. This battle has been fought a long time ago between K-12 and College. In K—12, you are under strict rules to show up on time for every class, 5 days a week, where attendance is taken. Every week for over a decade, and your best chance of escaping it is a snow day or a wonderful sick day.

Then you get to college and everyone says ‘enough of the nonsense’, you are free. Your obligation is to pass the class, whether that be by showing up to every lecture or just a few, whether you eat at the cafeteria every day or travel a few blocks to a restaurant.

It’s a matter of freedom. Covid was a black swan event that forced everyone for a second time to ‘cut the nonsense’, and ask ‘what is work really?’. Work is work that gets done. If work getting done is the measuring stick, then what is the superfluous push to add additional work? The commute, the banter, the office theatrics (yes, believe it or not I don’t work past lunch, even in the office - I’m staring blankly at the fucking screen). You want to keep the bullshit going?

crate_barreon Is 30s too late as a first time founder? (never done anything biz related)

Maybe I’m just out of touch, but wouldn’t someone in their 30s be a lot more emotionally mature and ready to handle starting a company way better than someone in their 20s? I was an absolute wreck of a kid in my 20s, so no clue how so many young people have it so together to run a company.

Is it possible we are still mythologizing the Zuckerbergs of this world?

crate_barreon Ask HN: What are the best examples of innovation you know?

Lyft/Uber, simple and solved a real need, changed how people get around.

crate_barreon Ask HN: If Bitcoin can be sanctioned, what’s the point?

I’m starting to think crypto is a FBI honeypot. Decentralized my ass, and the ledger is public. The inventor is ‘mysterious’.

crate_barreon Ask HN: How can Snowden stay in Russia as of March 2022?

In retrospect, I find it odd that some random US citizen would even do what he did. Who amongst us are that altruistic, that courageous? It’s in the realm of possibility this guy was compromised awhile ago (he even knew when to flee the country, where to go, who to tell).

Would you know to do all those things?

crate_barreon Ask HN: What is your take on carbon emissions of Machine Learning

The rate of carbon emission growth is a concern in places like India and China, not from bitcoin or machine learning. Someone should check me on this but I don’t even think getting the entire West to reduce carbon emissions will mean anything unless you can slow down the parabolic rate of India and China.

So, no, machine learning is like at the bottom of the list in terms of concerns.

crate_barreon Ask HN: What do Russians on HN think about this war?

Same, it’s obvious the West has a narrative that is being pushed.

crate_barreon Ask HN: Are there “regular” SWE jobs that pay $200k+?

200 is not base yet in SF and NYC?

crate_barreon Ask HN: Are there “regular” SWE jobs that pay $200k+?

I think you can get close to at 200k benchmark as inflation hits. Regardless, companies that are even edging to that mark are mini wannabe faangs and will use the same hiring process.