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fffernan

90 karma · joined May 30, 2013

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fffernan··on Stop Flock
Live in a neighborhood that privately installed cameras. The city also installed cameras. Before the camera's cars used to come and raid houses and worker's trucks. It was quite common. The neighborhood has statistics and tracks how many stolen cars / plates drove through the neighborhood. All crime statistics dropped, police show up and arrest people. Saying its an illusion of safety is bullshit. It's all fake until you're a victim of a crime. We need our own way to fight back against gangs, etc. I'd rather have more cameras and less police. Also lets get some drones as well, they work fantastic in SF. The city owns the data its not getting sold. It gets erased unless a crime is reported.
fffernan··on 81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone
Can't imagine Boston or New York doing this. In Boston the'd end up giving the fan lifetime Dunkin Donuts or something on TV and just let him walk into the park since all of the ushers probably know him already. Dodgers are really missing the point here.
fffernan··on Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
Seems like a pretty good investment. Leading EV company and 1tn +. Lots of white collar jobs.
fffernan··on Claude is the drug, Cursor is the dealer
Don't worry they will offer you Rivermind Plus soon to solve all the problems
fffernan··on OpenAI Says It's "Over" If It Can't Steal All Your Copyrighted Work
Last I checked Google is not buying or pirating books for Google Search they just grab free data that has been provided.
fffernan··on The First Suburb
In China they went and built a ton of housing, but then people don't want to live in those cities and their population has peaked up. So forcing housing solutions doesn't necessarily end well either.
fffernan··on Covid-19 Intranasal Vaccine
Even better is to wear a mask (not to prevent virus from coming in that's silly air gets around it) but to keep your nasal passages moist during a high altitude flight. Japanese have known this for years and why they wear masks so much.
fffernan··on Japan's first-ever soft lunar landing with SLIM spacecraft [video]
Happens to me all the time in Kerbal
fffernan··on Volvo Cars Adopts Tesla's NACS Port in the United States, Canada and Mexico
They should have responded 10 years ago and built a reliable charging network across the globe.
fffernan··on Intuit pouring money into lobbying amid push for free government-run tax filing
Considering Inflation its actually a reduction in spending.
fffernan··on OneWeb will resume satellite launches with SpaceX as the launch provider
not to mention you can use that as a way to spy and choke your competition out when they rely on you
fffernan··on Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
I'm wondering if someone could file HIPAA complaint at them and get these things classified as Medical Devices and shut this sharing of bio data down. A simple opt-out doesn't fly with HIPAA. It requires a signature that you will allow another person to access your medical records.
fffernan··on Microservices Considered Harmful (2019)
For the most part this level of microservice solves the problem of: New engineering leader comes in. New engineering Leader wants to rewrite the entire thing cause "it sucks". Business doesn't have resources to rewrite (for the nth time). New leader and business compromise to create a microservice. Rinse and repeat. Cloud/container/VM tech as really allowed this pattern to work. The art of taking over an existing codebase, keeping it going at low cost, low overhead is gone. Nobody's promo packet is fulled with sustainment work. One microservice per promotion. Etc etc.
fffernan··on The care and feeding of software engineers, or why engineers are grumpy (2012)
I never dictate process to my teams, but then when i see them floundering around. "Maybe you should have a daily?" Then 2 weeks later "We had this great idea! We are going to meet daily!". If a manager is involved in Scrum its not really scrum...
fffernan··on Strengthening Congressional Independence from Corporate Lobbyists
Why Nerds? Let's hire people who are technically capable to do the job.

The future is here. The minimum level of knowledge to be functional in society has increased. Lazy folks who don't pick up a book or take a course like to label the capable people as nerds.

fffernan··on The Death of Social Reciprocity in the Era of Digital Distraction
Disagree. Plenty of perverts in many countries. Do some googling about the guys in trench coats on trains in Japan.
fffernan··on 2020 Honda E Has 148 HP and More Than 221 LB-FT
It's even better you can get 200mi of range in 35 minutes now with a model 3. Soon 300 miles in 15 minutes will be possible...
fffernan··on Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums
I call it "early adopters". This proposition basically secures guaranteed profits over 5 years. Once I saw this I did whatever I could do to buy California property. It's like a pyramid scheme, as long as people keep hitting big on those startups :-).
fffernan··on Apple was overtaken by Huawei in global smartphone sales
Strange like the government in China is subsidizing it?
fffernan··on Average annual hours worked per country
You would also have to factor the amount of time spent socializing at work versus actually doing work. In Japan most of your friends are at work, and relationships are in work. Lots of coffee breaks, chatting about non work related matters,etc,etc. 8 hours spent at the office in US is much more work being done than 12 hours of busy Asian country. That being said there certainly was a good amount of people actually working themselves to death for 15hours day actually working while their bosses did not much work. Source: Worked at a Japanese company for almost a decade.
fffernan··on Beset by Homelessness, Rising Rents, SF Cracks Down on Dockless Scooters
Can we add "roads worse than 3rd world countries" to the list?
fffernan··on Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL announced
Bose BT headphones have two inputs. I usually have my phone and laptop connected. It has some priority sorting order which seems to work well.
fffernan··on Paying top employees the highest salaries in the market
There is a big difference from being paid in USD and being paid in the equivalent of USD in Yuan. Ever try to get 1 million USD equivalent of Yuan out of China before?
fffernan··on I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
Until you find out it takes 30 days for UPS to rule on a lost delivery.
fffernan··on Take Naps at Work
Although this may be true and effective. 80% of the folks reading this are just going to use it as an excuse to be more lazy.
fffernan··on No correlation between headphone frequency response and retail price
How about correlation between the amount of marketing dollars spent compared to the price.
fffernan··on The young Japanese working themselves to death
And that's exactly why the foreigners get away with it. Can't follow unwritten rules you don't know.
fffernan··on Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff
Etsy alternative: https://www.thegrommet.com/
fffernan··on Voice Calls: Secure, Crystal-Clear, AI-Powered
Line is so dominant in Japan,Taiwan,Thailand, and HongKong and kept themselves independent and hugely profitable. Kakao Talk in Korea. WeChat in China. Even in the US its going to be all SnapChat soon. Whatsapp is way way behind in features it is prime for disruption. Why would Whatsapp have huge growth waiting for it? What's their particular plan?
fffernan··on YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas
I'd say the Research Universities, Medical Technology, Robotics, and Travel Technology that comes out of Boston is significantly ahead of Silicon Valley.

Automotive and related tech is quite small even with Tesla in the bay area. The number of automotive technology jobs is quite small. Automation technology from cars is picking up, but I doubt the number of jobs is very high in comparison to Detroit, Stuttgart, or Nagoya

There are a lot more aerospace outside of Silicon Valley with Aerobus and Boeing having little presence in California.

Google is #3 in cloud technology compared to Seattle/Redmond with AWS and Azure with significant marketshare advantage.

Amazon is 45% marketshare in US for online commerce. Logistics technology for them is mainly built in Seattle and Boston. Not much for Amazon going on in Silicon Valley. Alexa not made in Silicon Valley.

I'm still quite surprised people still believe Silicon Valley + SF lead in technology.

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