Hacker News Reader

ddaygoldon Who's Missing from America's Colleges? Rural High School Graduates

The laws banning military grade weapons already exist -- the civilian AR-15 is not an military grade M-16, it is difficult to obtain an automatic weapon, destructive devices are banned-ish.

Fundamentally the problem is that gun ownership is a core American ideal (to enough electorally well placed people), so outright bans are infeasible and other restrictions cause a race by manufacturers to innovate around the restrictions.

ddaygoldon The Mastermind Behind Chase’s Sapphire Reserve Card Sets Her Sights on Banking

There was an interesting story going around the desk December 2016. The head trader was laughing and shaking his head about [1], JP's $200MM write down on the card. He then turned to the younger (millenial-aged) traders to ask if they had it. They all did.

Perhaps JP is taking a calculated risk? Perhaps they created a $200 buck giveaway? I don't know much about consumer lending, but it seems like somebody convinced a management comittee that it's a money maker.

What's the play? Gradually reduce benefits and hope that switching friction leaves enough people on the card to make it up in fees? Is it just a straight forward transfer from merchant fees to card holders? Is it driven by wealth disparity: the higher income people likely to be enticed by the card are such a large proportion of the money flow (and therefore fees) that they are a critical target? Is it millennial hysteria?

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-06/dimon-say...

ddaygoldon Solid metallic hydrogen has been produced in the laboratory

One of my co-workers got his PhD with the lab/advisor that published his paper. He thought they weren't going to be able to synthesize it, so he left to be a quant.

I sent him an email saying 'hey, isn't this what your PhD was on?'. Then, I looked up his thesis and saw that this was his thesis and, but this publication was from his lab, with his advisor as co-author.

Oh man. I hope I didn't cause any existential dread. He didn't just make a decision that cost him a Nobel, right?

ddaygoldon Nervous about nukes again? Here’s what you need to know about the Button

In comparison to the Soviet Union? Yes, the US was more transparent than the Soviet Union.

ddaygoldon Code Is Never “Perfect”, Code Is Only Ever “Good Enough”

There is code that pushes the boundaries of the human mind, complex systems that cannot have any additional complexity if they are to succeed.

And there's other code that pushes against physical or economic limits: processor speed, memory available, network latency. In those systems, writing in an inefficient, high level language is just as wrong as writing the first type of code in a low level one.

Fast, complex, difficult to fully verify code is not bad coding practice any more than a rocket is a worse vehicle than a Volvo because it explodes more. Volvos can't go to space.

ddaygoldon Why Wolfram Mathematica did not use Lisp (2002)

I tried BRL-CAD while trying to finish my transition away from Windows to Linux. Although BRL-CAD has features that arguably make it more 'powerful' than Solidworks (the package I had learned previously), it was incredibly less intuitive to use.

To me, it seemed like a software package. Of course, it /is/ a software package, but making models in CAD doesn't feel like writing software to me. Making models in CAD reminds me of playing with LEGOs, a very visual activity. Typing in coordinates just seems wrong.

Now, I failed to effectively learn the software. It is totally possible that if I were a faster learner, or had more perseverance, I would be born again as a BRL-whisperer. I was just hung up on how wrong and difficult it felt compared to SolidWorks.