Hacker News Reader

ecobikeron Why do the poor make poor decisions?

I grew up with the kind of income that would qualify me as poor. However, my parents' financial discipline were off the charts for someone in their position. Both of them had a decent education for their time and knew what matters vs what doesn't. We never got anything fancy - two pairs of uniforms, one nice set of clothes, one pair of shoes and pretty ugly looking backpack for the whole school year - nothing more. Absolutely no pocket money. No movies, not even extra-curricular activities - basically anything that costed money.

What we got was good healthy food, a great education - things that ended up making a difference in the long term. There were people like us all around us who we could clearly see not appreciating the value of some of the things we valued.

I would go so far to say, it's not the money. People need education. People need discipline and self-control if they are really going to pull their weight. They need help along the way but it's not always money they need.

ecobikeron Facebook and Twitter pledge to remove hate speech within 24 hours

"The squeaky wheel gets the grease". I have heard far many times for my liking that Apple/Facebook/Twitter/Google...etc are private companies and they can do whatever they want as an argument. The same goes for products that are free. It doesn't automatically mean that we lose the right to criticize. It's necessary and healthy to raise objections and demand features that we'd like to have. It's in these companies' own best interests to listen to their customers and make decisions with their customers in mind (too). Even if these companies don't take heed, someone else would. May be another company would build something we are asking for. May be another social media company could pop up with a constitution like protection of freedom of speech.

The difference is that nobody is asking for these companies to be banned or to cease operations. They are free to do what they want and we are free to ask what we want.

ecobikeron Git Reflow

The way I see it, I don't want somebody else to do the squash for me. It's my responsibility to make sure my commits are logical. I do as many rebases, fixups, squashes as necessary and provide a logical set of commits. I want the merges to preserve that as it is. But as others have said, there are plenty of really valid reasons to alter history as one deems necessary.

ecobikeron Employment, construction, and the cost of San Francisco apartments

SF has far fewer trees than other cities. I agree that the city needs more trees but the city should plant them on sidewalks and other open spaces.

http://www.deeproot.com/blog/blog-entries/tree-cover-how-doe...

ecobikeron Paul Graham on Uber and Lift Ban in Austin

I disagree. People were given a chance to express their opinion. If they cared enough, they should have voted. While that I don't necessarily agree with the ban, it's very important to note that the decision didn't happen in a closed door meeting.

It could be argued that these sort of regulations are not needed at all in the first place - as long as companies are transparent about it and people can vote with their wallets. However, there is a line. Where that line is drawn is decided by the society. I'd be happy as long as that decision is transparent.

Democracy is by no means perfect - transparency and an involved populace would make it work better. If either is found lacking, we should try to make it better.

ecobikeron Amazon Targets YouTube with New Online Video Posting Service

Back when Kindle launched, it was very common to see the story of Kodak being floated around (film vs digital) to claim how Amazon is flexible. Fast forward a few years, Amazon video and music services are the worst in terms of cross platform support. The primary reason I don't buy/rent anything from Amazon Digital is because I can't stream it to my Chromecast. Considering the adoption for Chromecast I would have expected Amazon to support. Instead they ban it from Amazon.com.

ecobikeron One Regulation Is Painless – A Million of Them Hurt

While the tax code should be simplified, it's possible to automate most of the rules anyway. It should be as simple as upload W2(s), link your trading accounts, answer a few questions and be done with it for most people. The software need not satisfy every usecase for everyone in the country. Are there an free/open source tax filing software?

ecobikeron Dark Patterns by the Boston Globe

Most countries that have VAT have a uniform percentage for the whole country.

ecobikeron A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage

>> "higher income than the value they can output"

Just so I can understand your argument better, can you elaborate this a bit more? How do you measure their output? How do you arrive at the dollar value?

ecobikeron Y Combinator Acquiring Sequoia Capital

I'm really looking forward to YC Forestry!

ecobikeron Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries

For anyone interested, Freakonomics explored[1] this in detail and their conclusions were pretty similar.

It included an interview from Claudia Goldin and her research[2] which was quite in-depth.

[1] http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-true-story-of-the-gender... [2] [PDF] http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goldin/files/gender_equalit...

ecobikeron Dsxyliea

Thanks for the link! Seems like a good place to start.

ecobikeron Dsxyliea

What tools do people use to get around dyslexia? I recently realised that most auto-correct and spelling correction tools breakdown for dyslexic people. The challenge for them is that they know how a word sounds but takes more time than usual to recollect the spelling. The recommendations suggested by standard spell checkers are way off the mark in those cases. Any recommendations would be appreciated.

ecobikeron Apple Is Said to Be Working on an iPhone Even It Can’t Hack

It's my understanding that the current battle is about the request to bypass the retry cap.

ecobikeron Break Up the Insulin Racket

http://theconversation.com/explainer-evergreening-and-how-bi...

I'm not an expert and I can't comment on specifics. But I'm of the opinion that a small enhancement is not the same as an invention of a drug and it doesn't come anywhere close to extending the life of the patent - unless that tiny change actually makes a big different in effectiveness.

Any good patent system should find a good balance between the two seemingly conflicting goals of incentivizing companies to innovate and keeping the price down for patients.

ecobikeron Break Up the Insulin Racket

A simple fix could go a long way - disallow really minor improvements and work hard to get rid of evergreening.

http://www.nature.com/news/indian-court-rejects-novartis-pat...

ecobikeron India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

But, if you look people out there is no way they'd even know if something is better...

ecobikeron India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

They will protest if the schools restrict to teaching Catholicism or the Vedas respectively.

ecobikeron How I got a CS degree with pen and paper and why I'm doing it again

Growing up I didn't have a computer at home. I would write my solutions in a paper, evaluate it mentally/with a pencil a few times, take it to my school or a friend's place and run it; only to find there is an issue. Rinse and repeat. I did this quite a few times and got really good at it. However, none of the languages are intuitive when you are learning it for the first time. You could easily be stuck at the most trivial of things about syntax, scoping, ..etc. Mistakes in a situation like mine are expensive - it usually takes a few days before I could verify again if my solution worked. It's really easy to lose your patience and move on.

ecobikeron Why Big Companies Keep Failing: The Stack Fallacy

I hope everyone within Skype used it as your main communication tool. If you did, the problem would have been so obvious. Not so long ago, it was revolutionary to be able to send messages to someone even when they were offline. However, once someone implements it every other chat app had very little time to do that. IMHO, there is nothing inherent about big companies from reacting quickly. It usually boils down to the culture of the company that's the cause. Call it "Bias for action" or "Ask forgiveness, not permission" or whatever you want to call it - a company (big or small) that allows people to go quickly fix an issue or try another solution instead of talking endlessly about it, well aware that there is a chance for failure, is the one that's likely to succeed.

ecobikeron Coffee Delivery Is the Future of On-Demand Ordering

Quite the opposite. In countries with cheap labor, it's quite common to get coffee/tea delivered to offices (for zero additional cost). You wouldn't even have to walk that two long blocks to Starbucks.

ecobikeron When to join a startup

I agree. Salary is a motivational factor - at least indirectly. It's a status symbol. It shows the company values you.

ecobikeron Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

http://www.theopeninter.net/

ecobikeron Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

I'm personally disappointed by the comments in this article and others, specifically from people here in the Western world, that portray the fight by the internet activists as a fight against internet access to the poor. No one would make arguments like that here. Almost everyone rallied behind Net-Neutrality. Why is that it's ok for the poor to give up their liberty because they can get something of value in return? "beggars cannot be choosers"? Come on - no one is begging for internet.

ecobikeron Facebook is misleading Indians with its full-page ads about Free Basics

It's not true that no other carrier is offering free internet. It's a better model with no restrictions.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/aircel-to-...

ecobikeron New Shepard: Bezos claims success on second spaceship flight

I see so many people complaining about the comparison but no explained it more clearly, thanks! Quick question though, isn't SpaceX trying to land just the first stage?

ecobikeron Bank of America Cut Off Finance Sites from Its Data

The US banking system has not adapted to the modern world at all. Anyone who has worked with ACH will tell you how bad it is from a payment processing point of view - for those who don't know - you only receive negative ack, i.e., when a transfer failed and it's nowhere close to being instantaneous. It's common elsewhere to have a "read" password and a "write" password. Basically, you'll be prompted with additional security measures when you are doing a transfer. Also, the details I give out to somebody to receive money is the same details someone needs to take money out from my account. What the US banks have is a "digital" cheque processing system and not a digital banking system.

It's antiquated.

ecobikeron Off the Grid, but Still Online

(Disclaimer: Slightly off-topic. Also, it's not my intention to belittle their lifestyle. I hope I don't come across that way.)

Some of the things they need even in this disconnected lifestyle - like the mobile home, laptops, books, solar panels, batteries and even the slippers have to be made by someone doing a 9-5 job somewhere. The idea of civilization to me is to take advantage of these specialists who are really good at doing or manufacturing some of the things I need and in turn I become a specialist in something (probably one thing) which I contribute back to the society - it's a barter. That I don't have to do all the things I need to do to survive, seems efficient and effective. Also, not all of the jobs are going to be able to afford this "luxury".

ecobikeron Temporary Visas, Meant to Import Talent, Help Ship Jobs Abroad

NYTimes is identifying the wrong problem here. What if Toys R Us sends an employee to India to train the team there (that's not uncommon). I'm struggling to understand the key takeaway from the article.

ecobikeron Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

OneNote is now completely free and available on iOS as well (where it has a full 5-star rating). As much I love Evernote, it's going to be an uphill battle for them. (And not to mention the handwriting experience and integration with the Surface Pen - which are killer features for students)