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fredfoobar42on University Students are Afraid of Everything

Telling someone to shut up because they're being abusive is still speaking up and taking responsibility. You have all the right to say what you want. Nobody has the right to listen to you, and they have as much right to tell you to shut your hole.

fredfoobar42on University Students are Afraid of Everything

Some opinions aren't worth having a discussion about. If someone says that "all fags should be rounded up and shot" there's nothing discussion worthy there. A rape survivor is under no obligation to have a discussion with someone who says "all rape victims deserve it, or are liars, or both."

These are extreme examples to be sure, but the principle remains.

And nobody is saying "you can't say 'all fags should be shot.'" They're saying 'You can't say it _here_." Freedom of speech is not freedom to be heard.

fredfoobar42on University Students are Afraid of Everything

And if you can cite a real female law student who is actually offended by the idea of learning about rape law, or even the word "violation," you might possibly have the vaguest sense of something possibly resembling a point if you happen to be looking at it from the right angle.

fredfoobar42on University Students are Afraid of Everything

Exactly. I'm 30, and I'm heartened by the idea of the next generation coming up with a culture that's more compassionate towards people who are different from them in various ways. For people in the HN demographic, behaving with compassion is clearly an inconvenience.

fredfoobar42on University Students are Afraid of Everything

Have you ever thought why that is?

I'm a "white NT cishet male", as well, and at a glance, you can't tell the decent people from the awful ones. It's about behavior, and in a space where most people who look like us act like shit, it's not unreasonable to generalize a lack of trust. It's not on them to be understanding, it's on _us_. because we're in the position of privilege in this situation.

fredfoobar42on University Students are Afraid of Everything

Speaking up when someone hurts you, deliberately or otherwise, _is_ taking responsibility.

fredfoobar42on University Students are Afraid of Everything

>Sleeping in a university during "normal work hours" (gasp!) has been normal for decades.

Seriously. There's a reason campuses have lounges and quiet areas, and it's not just so you can sit and do homework during your downtime.

fredfoobar42on University Students are Afraid of Everything

Or, we could take women and minority students at their word about the stuff they find offensive and hurtful and treat them with a little respect.

Oh, wait, that's too much work. They're just a bunch of whiners.

Edit: Not sure if the downvotes are because people don't get this was sarcastic, or if people do.

Either way: Try listening to the people complaining instead of just brushing them off as "whiners". I hope that clears things up.

fredfoobar42on Inside the Goth Chicken: Black Bones, Black Muscle and a Black Heart

It's like "How much more black could this chicken be?" And the answer is "None. None more black."

fredfoobar42on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2015)

  Location: New York, NY  
  Remote: Yes  
  Willing to relocate: No  
  Technologies: HTML, CSS, WordPress, PHP (enough to be dangerous), Email Newsletters, Social Media  
  Résumé/CV: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/502172/randerson_resume.pdf  
  Email: rich@sanspoint.com

fredfoobar42on Pension Funds Burn Cities as $1 Trillion Shortfall Set to Grow

Hedge funds aren't much better, and have the added "benefit" of being completely opaque to the investor with higher fees. Part of why there's so much investment in Venture and Growth Capital by so many institutions, including pensions, is that it's one of the few places that's seeing real returns. And when that bubble bursts...

fredfoobar42on Reddit Chief Engineer Quits After Less Than Two Months on the Job

I know exactly what they'll do: nothing.

fredfoobar42on The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

Not to be confused with the Baader-Meinhof Gang: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction

fredfoobar42on People Are Worried About Bond Market Liquidity

Isn't the whole point of bonds that they're _not_ highly liquid?

fredfoobar42on IndieWeb

Do I need to have this WebReply crap? I have my own domain, and I don't have comments, because I want to own every pixel of the thing.

fredfoobar42on Secret Shuts Down

notahacker beat me to it, but how do you sell ads to an anonymous audience without compromizing the anonymity of the audience? You can't, unless you want to do cheap, dumb banner ads. They missed the chance to monetize up front by launching as a free app. Any investor who looked at this app and thought for more than ten seconds should have run screaming, or had security drag the founders out of the building. Or both.

fredfoobar42on Secret Shuts Down

Good, and good riddance. Anyone who invested in Secret is a fucking moron. You can't monetize anonymous messaging, and no established company would buy technology they could build in an afternoon hackathon for the cost of a couple cases of Red Bull. If you need proof, 4chan's run at a loss for over a decade. Any investor in a VC fund that invested in Secret should sue their fund for mismanagement of money.

fredfoobar42on Best Practices for Email Coding

Tell me about it. I work for a publishing company that's transitioning from Print to Digital that deals with firms that are even less far along in the transition than we are. So, at least once a month, I have to tell someone, _again_ that we can't use Flash banners in email. We will NEVER be able to use Flash banners in an email. STOP ASKING.

fredfoobar42on Best Practices for Email Coding

I wish. Outlook's flakiness alone requires more knowledge than just HTML 4.

fredfoobar42on Elevator.js

Would be better with "Girl From Ipanema"

fredfoobar42on Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch

Damn, I ran DEVO's "Mongoloid" through that and got a Godspeed You! Black Emperor song.

fredfoobar42on Ask HN: How do I (a non-programmer) get _back_ into tech?

Heh, I don't like to talk to people, actually. One thing I do like about my job is that I get to sit in my cube all day with headphones on and only have to interact by email or IM.

fredfoobar42on Best, Brightest – and Saddest?

One word: Love.

I moved to New York City to be with the person I love. I'm not going to uproot them and drag them to Europe. I also like living where I do (maybe not this neighborhood specifically, but I don't hate it), so there's that.

fredfoobar42on Best, Brightest – and Saddest?

I was told from a very early age that I was going to be something special. I tested into Gifted Education in elementary school. I tested into the best public magnet school in Philadelphia.

The whole thing began to unravel in High School, really... got a "No Credit" for an extra-curricular college course, had to retake a year of Geometry, barely made it through High School Trig. But, I went to college to study Computer Science. And failed out. Failed the same Intro to Pre-Calculus class seven fucking times in three semesters. (Half-semester course.)

I took a semester off, and enrolled in a local community college. Changed my major to English. Graduated with a BA in 2008, in the middle of the economic crisis. I didn't have any Internships... couldn't afford to take one as I was working to pay my way through college part-time in the evenings. Got a shitty telemarketing job for the benefits, got fired, spent a year out of work, worked for the Philadelphia welfare office for a year and a half, and quit.

I lucked into a startup job as a Community Manager, but the environment was borderline abusive, and beyond the border unethical (buying lists of email addresses for their target market to add to their mailing list and calling them active users in fundraising presentations). After getting fired/quitting, I found a decent job doing Web Production for a speciality publishing company.

I'm 31, in debt up to my eyeballs with student loans, barely making ends meet, and working a job that offers no challenge and little opportunity for advancement. I have personal projects where I can get some joy, but it's hard to find the time to do those when you're working forty hours a week, with an hour commute each way, and seeing a huge chunk of your cash go towards paying off the creditors for your borderline useless degree. If I didn't have my self-taught HTML and CSS skills, I'd never be where I am, so that's something.

I still feel like I should be further along because of all the pushing I was given as a kid. They told me I'd change the world. Instead, I'm just some underemployed schlub. I'm not about to jump in front of a train, but for those kids with more pressure, I can't blame 'em.

Wow, that got long.

(I kept the names of the companies I worked for silent, because I try to keep this account semi-anonymous. The startup I worked for loves to threaten lawsuits against former---and current---employees who piss off the founder.)

fredfoobar42on It's not 1999

Also worth noting CalPERS has been slashing its VC allocations.

fredfoobar42on The Pono Player and Promises Fulfilled

I never claimed vinyl was superior, just different in a way I enjoy.

fredfoobar42on The Pono Player and Promises Fulfilled

For a counterpoint, based on actual science, make sure to read [Daniel Rutter's excellent "Righteous Bits"](http://www.dansdata.com/gz143.htm), and his [responses to the responses](http://www.dansdata.com/gz145.htm).

I listen to MP3s, I listen to AACs from the iTunes store, I listen to FLAC (concert bootlegs), and I listen to vinyl with a tube amp. I cannot tell the difference, even on quality studio headphones, between a v0 MP3, an iTunes 256kbps AAC, and a FLAC file. I can tell a difference with vinyl and the amp, but while it's different, I would hesitate to say it's _better_, let alone assume the reason why.

fredfoobar42on Water Fluoridation Linked to Higher ADHD Rates

No Dr. Strangelove fans on HN?

fredfoobar42on Water Fluoridation Linked to Higher ADHD Rates

And this is why I only drink rain water and pure grain alcohol... to ensure the purity of my precious bodily fluids...

fredfoobar42on RadioShack Suffered as Free Time Evaporated

Bull. Shit.

RadioShack hasn't catered to the hobbyist market in the better part of 20 years. I worked for RadioShack around 2001, and they'd already jettisoned almost all the parts by then. The focus was on pushing cell phones, overpriced TVs and PCs, and extended warranties for everything.