Hacker News Reader

fermienricoon A professor declined a $60K research award from Google

Timrit's actions are deeply unpleasant on Twitter. I don't care what side of the coin you're on - vile, contemptful behavior like this must be condemned. These people want to get famous and they're thirsty for social-martyr points. In their wake, they coerce people into shame, social media justice and other despicable behavior. She seems to tweet at an alarming frequency - some 10 mins between tweets all day when she isn't sleeping.

It is asymmetric social warfare. We're not listening to the other half of the story, other half being a giant corporation that can't go argue on a Twitter thread with her.

Seriously, go on her twitter page and see it for yourself. I implore you. It's like we've lost our ability to discuss difficult topics, politely present our case and be respectful to everyone.

fermienricoon One of America’s $135.8M Fighter Jets Shot Itself

VICE has been on a rampage of anti-US articles, day after day, video after video.

It is no longer the VICE we know of early 2010s when it did factual reporting.

fermienricoon China Cancels H&M

Hmm... if a company blackmails people into submission, exploiting their economic dependence - we wouldn't call that positive PR. Branding success is "I love this company." and investing in long term goodwill of the brand. This is directly supported by the GP's link to the Pew research polls that show how they're squandering their reputation around the world.

What you are describing is Economic Coercion: https://www.csis.org/analysis/time-collective-pushback-again...

fermienricoon China Cancels H&M

China has a branding problem. Instead of garnering support, building rapport through collaboration and mutual growth, their PR strategy is immature and misplaced at best, damaging and crippling at worst. Lashing out, isolationism, asymmetric trade, human rights issues and generally going against democracy is putting them at odds with everyone else.

China could have played this so much better.

fermienricoon China Cancels H&M

Apple employees and their stance is to support diversity and inclusion, fully embracing it but turn a blind eye when they need to also talk about Xianjin and human rights abuses.

Just shows that it’s all a dog and pony show.

fermienricoon The Bank of England unveils design of new £50 banknote featuring Alan Turing

The number of posts with downvotes just shows how divisive and vengeful we’ve become. Can we get along and celebrate the simple thing that a brilliant computer scientist is being celebrated? The father of computing rather.

What is wrong with you all?

We are doing a disservice to Alan Turing’s legacy by bickering with our small minds. Shame on everyone here.

fermienricoon Transiting the Suez Canal in a Private Sailboat (2003)

Replace extortion with rape. You'll quickly realize how absurd this argument is. They're breaking their own laws decided by their own people.

fermienricoon Transiting the Suez Canal in a Private Sailboat (2003)

That should not be justification for intimidation and flat out extortion.

You're phrasing this as if it is OK and should be the expectation.

fermienricoon Julia 1.6 Highlights

Seems like you're the founder of Julia. Why such a knee jerk reaction? Did you read the benchmark page? The table of content is right at the top.

Optics of this type of reaction is seen everywhere in the Julia community. My advice is to embrace negativity around the language, try to understand if it is fabrication or legitimate, and address the shortcomings.

Julia is a beautiful language and hope some of the warts of the language gets fixed.

fermienricoon Julia 1.6 Highlights

Are the performance claims of Julia greatly exaggerated?

Julia loses almost consistently to Go, Crystal, Nim, Rust, Kotlin, Python (PyPy, Numpy): https://github.com/kostya/benchmarks

Is this because of bad typing or they didn't use Julia properly in idiomatic manner?

fermienricoon Intel chief Pat Gelsinger: Too many chips made in Asia

Come over and join us. We need some help with social policies of Europe and getting rid of the stupid ass imperial measurement system.

fermienricoon Intel chief Pat Gelsinger: Too many chips made in Asia

By all means, hire every diverse candidate you can if they’re the best and the brightest. Diversity and inclusion is a sure fire way to hire mediocre people. Every culture and every race has some brilliant folks. Hire them.

fermienricoon Comparing Svelte and React

What are the downsides or criticisms of Svelte? This whole thread is like a giant bandwagon. Typical of JS crowd. 3 years later, everyone is going to jump on the next one.

fermienricoon America’s bald eagle population continues to soar

You might as well just scratch the entire animal kingdom off your favorites list, you're not going to like it very much.

fermienricoon America’s bald eagle population continues to soar

It's practical to call the collective states with joint borders. For example, "Lower 48 shipping" on Amazon is different rate.

fermienricoon America’s bald eagle population continues to soar

As superpower mascots go, I think the eagle turned out to be pretty much perfect. Large, powerful, masters of their environment, noble from a distance. Up close, intelligent, optimally utilizing resources through scavenging, leaving nothing to waste and who love the opportunity to provide to their young ones and benefit other creatures through symbiosis.

One can spin it whatever which way.

fermienricoon Debranding Is the New Branding

It's amazing how this article presents a lot of information without saying anything much about them.

fermienricoon Cookie Consent Speed Running Game

This is the part that they didn't legislate.

fermienricoon Ask HN: Do you create music? let's hear it

Amazing! The first baloran pool song has a very interesting texture.

fermienricoon Excel Never Dies

Native Windows XP + Excel was badass. No new features were needed. No one asked for anything else. It was feature complete.

Have you tried running an older version of Excel (2007 era) even in a VM? It is lightning fast. No cell-movement animations and this unibar crap at the top, saving a file is 2 clicks away unlike the newer version going off to the cloud, making requests and having to back out to save locally. WTF.

Excel is an amazing app. UI engineers and PMs at Microsoft are trying to kill it.

fermienricoon The puzzle of Europe

Not with that attitude!

fermienricoon The puzzle of Europe

EU has anemic salaries for my profession (software engineer).

What’s the reason for this deficit? Why aren’t there any Silicon Valleys in the EU?

Salary difference is so large, I would never move. Land is dirt cheap, housing is affordable and private healthcare is fine in the US.

Before we get in a war on HN - I would move instantly if the salary is matched or even better than US since everything else is scarce in EU (housing, land). Yep, here comes the downvotes.

fermienricoon US-China War over Taiwan: All Measures Short of a Cross Straits Invasion

I recall indirect discussions with the locals. Basically job related "Would you ever move to Taiwan or Hong Kong?" and even "Would you move to United States?". This is to fresh graduates (~1-2 years into the job). The answer I got was resounding no, with further explanations involving the progress of China and how amazing the government is at getting rid of corruption and removing obstacles for private enterprises.

You could sense a tremendous amount of optimism and nationalism lurking behind their opinions. I could not open any discussion criticizing CCP, that wouldn't have gone well. Also discussed military strength, fighter pilots (oh they really wanted to be one of those guys) and some discussion around religion or lack thereof.

FWIW, these were outskirts of industrial towns in China. In Sichuan region mostly which is pretty different than Beijing , Shanghai and Shenzhen.

fermienricoon US-China War over Taiwan: All Measures Short of a Cross Straits Invasion

I’ve spent months in China and often rural areas. What you’re saying is definitely not true, I’m not sure how to convince you though. I don’t remember specific stories.

Nationalism is helluva drug.

Just look at the HK situation.

fermienricoon US-China War over Taiwan: All Measures Short of a Cross Straits Invasion

Taiwan with nukes would lead to long term peace. South Korea used to house US nuclear arms until 1992 and they're re-considering it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea_and_weapons_of_mas...

fermienricoon US-China War over Taiwan: All Measures Short of a Cross Straits Invasion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Chinese_sentiment

US and Europe align within a few % when it comes to anti-China sentiments. US is 7th after Japan, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, UK and South Korea.

fermienricoon A truck driver uncovers secrets about the first nuclear bombs

> My guess is that the person who first said that didn't intend for the metaphor/description to be taken quite as literally as everyone ended up taking it. (Or they meant to mislead.)

This is the problem. Why are they trying to shoehorn male or female dominance here? The whole thing is not only unpleasant to read, but also confusing.

fermienricoon A truck driver uncovers secrets about the first nuclear bombs

New Yorker, I found, is always obtuse, long-winded prose that fill up 14 pages where the whole thing can be, if it was written like a normal article, summarized in no more than 3 pages. It is prose porn for writers and readers alike.

If I want good prose, I read the the Cabinet Magazine which is far superior in writing, curtness and straightforwardness while not affecting the charming and poetical aspects of writing.

Furthermore, New Yorker has inappropriate political and social undertones that is very offputting - they don't belong here and but its beat into place. Any informed reader would see through it. If you enjoy that sort of a thing, great but it's not my thing even if I agree with the underlying message.

fermienricoon Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies

Just keep in mind, Switzerland has the population the size of SF Bay area for context.

fermienricoon ISO Standard for Preparing Tea

This standard is not for you.

People here are missing the purpose of a standard. No matter the details, it serves as a standard way to brew and conduct tasting for tea traders and professionals. Nit picking whether this or that is fine but unless something drastically changes (such as dynamic range of tastes), it won’t matter much. Whether it follows tradition in your specific region is also irrelevant. This isn’t the “right” way to brew either nor does it try to.

Ironically, the bickering here is exactly why a standard is needed. It is proving its point.