Hacker News Reader

electricvioleton How much do we need the police?

This is really interesting -- thanks for the link.

electricvioleton Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

The real alternative is more housing development plus treating housing as a social good rather than an investment, but that's a long-term goal, it's not gonna happen overnight.

electricvioleton Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

Yeah, your experience is just very different from the average renter if you move around a lot, so you have different concerns.

electricvioleton Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

You said "when things come easy to people, they don't appreciate it" referring to one of your Section 8 tenants.

If you didn't mean to imply that housing comes easy to poor people who are on Section 8, then what did you mean?

electricvioleton How much do we need the police?

Most of the left leaders I follow and trust are specifically opposed to police unions due to the fact that they protect violent officers.

Let's not lump other public sector unions in with police unions; the teacher's union has nothing to do with police brutality.

electricvioleton A Fast, Cheap and Scary Way to Cool the Planet

Carbon-neutral energy sources are already cheaper than fossil fuels. The problem is inertia.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/15/renewa...

electricvioleton Is2020over

And we all know which one it's going to be...

electricvioleton Boeing cutting more than 12,000 U.S. jobs with thousands more planned

No, "de" is a preposition -- "of the rear"

electricvioleton Show HN: Twitch Roulette – Find and chat with streamers who are streaming alone

This is why we can't have nice things :(

electricvioleton Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies

If the infection rate were 50% we would be close to herd immunity (which I've read would require about 70% for this virus), so that would be better news in a sense.

Unfortunately 21% is a long way from 70%, and it's taken a massive amount of death to get to that point.

electricvioleton Apple Faceshield

The harm right now is that there's not even enough PPE for hospitals, so anyone buying a face shield for themselves, if that were possible, would keep a face shields from going to a health worker who needs it more.

A couple months from now, when pressure on the healthcare system is lower and manufacturing capacity is ramped up? Sure, I'm all for it.

electricvioleton Unofficial Apple Archive

There may be other local electronics recyclers who will take it.

electricvioleton Climate threats now dominate long-term risks, survey of global leaders finds

> Climate change is reversible in a couple hundred years

That's optimistic. Climate change is potentially reversible, but it would involve large-scale geoengineering or carbon capture that we don't have the technology for yet.

Developing and deploying that currently-nonexistent technology requires a stable, organized society. It's plausible that climate change could cause the breakdown of organized society before we're able to develop technology to reverse it.

electricvioleton Blackout Bug: Boeing 737 cockpit screens go blank if lands on specific runways

This can't be the case -- the bug only affects specific runways at these airports, not all the runways.

electricvioleton Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

Honestly I'd be fine with a model where city centers are primarily pedestrian and there are big parking garages on the borders of those areas. Less parking space would be needed overall since each residence and business wouldn't need it's own set of parking spaces that aren't always in use.

electricvioleton Thousands flock to Wikipedia founder's 'Facebook rival'

There are thousands of us! Thousands!

electricvioleton Chicago book returns surge 240% after city eliminates fines

In fairness, my library system has a fairly steep fine system and I've gone 8 months without returning a book before.

Anecdote vs. anecdote.

electricvioleton Aviation Is on a Low-Carbon Flight Path

No, of course not, but it allows the opportunity for that same plane to be powered by no-carbon sources in the future. With a gas-engine-powered plane, there's no chance of that.

electricvioleton Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?

About the taxes thing -- you can subtract foreign taxes that you pay from your American tax bill, and you also get an exemption on your first $100,000 of earnings, so it really only affects you if you're living in a low-tax-rate country AND making a six-figure salary in USD.

(I'm an American living abroad so I deal with this every year.)

electricvioleton Rejected from YC (Again)

I have friends who have had awful experiences working for NGOs, and eventually ended up burning out.

It can be all the stress of working for a tech company, with 1/3 of the pay. The dynamic that often shows up is that higher-ups try to use employees' intrinsic motivation to guilt them into working longer hours and accepting low pay, "for the greater good".

There are good and bad NGO workplaces, just as there are good and bad private workplaces. But NGOs as a whole are no safe haven.

electricvioleton Will America's debt doom us?

Not trying to minimize the human cost of global economic disruption, but it's almost certainly less than total extinction.

electricvioleton Will America's debt doom us?

Maybe it's because of the difference in what's at stake:

If the USA falls into a debt crisis the result will be global economic disruption.

If the world falls into runaway climate change the result will be the extinction of the human race and possibly all life on earth.

Personally I'm more comfortable with the possibility of the first than of the second.

electricvioleton Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees

I actually love it. Knock sock.

electricvioleton Richard M. Stallman resigns

Of course they should still be able to live a good life, but they should certainly not be able to hold a position of power over the people who their opinions are offensive towards and still be allowed to express those opinions.

electricvioleton Richard M. Stallman resigns

I want everyone to understand the medium his comments were made in.

This was not just a "work forum", it was a mailing list containing thousands of people in the MIT computer science community, including professors, researchers, administrative assistants, graduate students, and hundreds of undergraduates.

This isn't just a matter of his comments being inappropriate, it's also about him arguing them in an effectively public forum.

electricvioleton People Recognize Objects by Visualizing Their “Skeletons”

OK, rephrase the question to "Does the way we've programmed computers to learn happen to resemble the way that humans learn?"

electricvioleton It's later than you think

Let's be clear -- the biggest responsibility for change rests on those who have the most power. Those "cowards" may have no savings and could be fired at the drop of a hat.

But if what you mean is that employees have a choice between passively accepting the status quo or trying to act collectively to improve their conditions, then yes, I agree.

electricvioleton Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes (2013)

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/us/baby-formula-the-locke...

I suspect it's primarily in low-income areas.

electricvioleton Much fridge food ‘goes there to die’

You buy 2-3 slices of bread every morning? Or are you buying some kind of roll or smaller unit of bread? The smallest unit of bread most people are able to buy is a loaf, and for me, it takes a week or two to go through a loaf of bread.