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funkysquid

271 karma · joined August 21, 2015

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funkysquid··on John Carmack on the Government
"Helping people directly can be a noble thing. Forcing other people to do it with great inefficiency? Not so much."

Just because scaling a process results in inefficiencies doesn't mean there's no need to scale it. If you feel like you personally can help every person directly, please do, disrupt taxes! But until you, we're not tearing down the system that works (however inefficiently).

funkysquid··on Peter Thiel, YC, and hard decisions
"donating $1.25 million is a lot more than speech"

It's somewhat easy to argue that someone should not face professional repercussions for their support of a candidate. It's harder to argue that they should be able to donate 463x what a typical person might (assuming a generous $2.7k not using Super PACs).

funkysquid··on Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store
That's infuriating - is there some way we can contact the app review team to complain about their "final" decision?
funkysquid··on Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store
This really sucks - just bought a copy of his MacOS app through his website to try and help compensate. At this point I'm starting to avoid buying software through the Mac App Store unless it's not available anywhere else. Even if it's slightly easier to make a purchase initially, you risk the headache of situations like this where you can't even migrate your license.
funkysquid··on New Shepard In-Flight Escape Test [video]
That's what I thought as well, but watching some other videos on their site, they say the boost happens in "the last second" https://youtu.be/xYYTuZCjZcE?t=2m34s. Any sign of thrust before landing really isn't visible in that video either. So unless they've never actually fired it successfully and we just don't know what it looks like, it's possible that it's just so close to touchdown that we can't distinguish the thrust from the landing.

I'm assuming that decelerating by 13mph over < 1s is still quite a bit better than by 15mph instantly? But I really don't know.

funkysquid··on Apps that send packages with the Shippo API
I've gotten that exact error - good to know what was going on :P
funkysquid··on Apps that send packages with the Shippo API
I'm sure this is not the intended use case, but considering the trouble I've had trying to use UPS/Fedex/USPS to print shipping labels for my personal use (many of the websites suck), it'd be great to see a desktop app that used this API to find the lowest cost service, print you a label for it, and track your shipment.
funkysquid··on Faking your death
True - although I feel like every other job that deals with high stress situations finds other ways to give people that training. Also you can always drop out.
funkysquid··on Conversation between two bottlenose dolphins recorded for first time
This is fascinating - I wonder what sort of information they're able (and interested) to communicate to each other - food? locations? types of food? captivity? That could become an awkward conversation...
funkysquid··on Faking your death
Yeah, you're pretty much stuck. Come to think of it, there's no reason you should be. Asking someone to commit to something like military service before trying the (degrading) training is total BS. If they think letting people leave in the middle would loose them too many recruits, they might actually have to start training people humanely.
funkysquid··on How foreign governments spy using PowerPoint and Twitter
I'm not sure gitmo qualifies as humanitarian aid.
funkysquid··on A Tragic Loss
I don't think they should have said anything at all in this case, beyond their condolences.

1. Autopilot didn't cause the accident, but they're sort of making it sound like it did by bringing it up

2. If people are arguing that autopilot contributed by making the driver feel like they didn't need to pay as much attention, the only way to defend against that is to blame the driver - why would you do that?

3. It's sort of invading the privacy of someone who recently died by detailing the crash, making it about Tesla. I don't believe other car companies would issue a PR release if one of their cars got in a crash, even with accident avoidance features on?

It somehow manages to feel self serving and make Tesla look bad at the same time.

funkysquid··on Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty
"He couldn't hold down a job and regularly missed appointments."

I think this is part of the problem - right now in society, if you can't be on time and hold down a job, you'll go hungry and have no place to live. Basic income removes that harsh penalty, and lets people live regardless of whether they can make an appointment.

funkysquid··on Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty
Are you saying that people commit crimes because they have too much time on their hands?
funkysquid··on A Pointless Cancer ‘Moonshot’
I'm not sure how you get from, "this is a difficult problem that won't be solved soon", to, "throwing money at this problem is pointless". It seems like the best way to solve problems is not to give up, but to keep the people who are trying to fix it well funded.

Does he just want a more dourer PR campaign? I suppose "We probably won't cure cancer, but, I guess this is better than nothing" would be more realistic.

funkysquid··on I’m a black man – What happened when I booked an Airbnb
Agreed. I'd also say if people are using them to discriminate on race, they shouldn't allow the hosts to see profile pictures of prospective renters.
funkysquid··on Living Only on Bitcoins
Interesting idea, but it feels a bit like "how to use the stock market instead of a bank account". The author mentions fluctuations but seems to think bank fees would be more of an issue - but bank fees could be like $100 at most, where bitcoins could fluctuate all your cash by any percentage at all.
funkysquid··on SpaceX lands rocket at sea second time after satellite launch
Good question - Elon tweeted this https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/728459808270000128 - sounds like they could end up with a backlog ;)
funkysquid··on Tell HN: Winners of Apply HN for YC Fellowship 3
"but when we dug into the data we found that the votes for Pinboard look dramatically different from the votes for the other startups."

Examining the data, we found that there were oddly more votes cast for Pinboard than the other contestants, which smelled fishy so they were disqualified. Seriously, don't ask for people to vote for things and then ignore the results. Just don't ask them to vote in the first place.

funkysquid··on Reddit and Facebook Veteran on How to Troubleshoot Troublemakers
Yeah, I feel like going and redesigning parts of the system that are usually other peoples' area would result in some interpersonal problems at the least.

I'm sure the dev ops people will be happy I converted our automation from Chef to Puppet, you're welcome!

funkysquid··on Reddit and Facebook Veteran on How to Troubleshoot Troublemakers
As one of these problem people myself, it's helpful to know that this is considered bad behavior. I'm not sure it should be though...

The thought process is that many times the barrier to adopting a better technology is just the time investment. So if you're sick of working with a problematic system, but the team doesn't have the time to fix it, fixing it away from work might remove that pain point from your life. And since often these projects begin and even end as just an experiment, there's not much reason to tell the team until you have something.

It doesn't really seem to have much of a downside - assuming you're just presenting whatever you come up with to the team later as an option, and not going crazy and replacing production systems without asking.

funkysquid··on What to do with the “rm -rf” hoax question
If you're curious what the hoax post was (the answers have since been merged onto a different question) -

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6y3HTYv...

funkysquid··on Anxiety and Depression Are Symptoms, Not Diseases
> Or if you are outside for a long time in the cold with no jacket, upon feeling very cold, you don’t say that you have "a coldness disorder".

A better example for anxiety or depression would be standing inside in a warm room, and despite everyone else in the room being comfortable, you are unable to warm up at all. When you complain, you are told that "everyone gets cold sometimes".

This article doesn't seem to have any new information, it's just repeating the old ideas that depression and anxiety are the same as temporary sadness and worry due to legitimate problems.

funkysquid··on TaskMail – Fresh way to manage projects and issues
To me it sounds like it's coming from someone who has had to use JIRA in the past. Harsh, but personally I can relate to all of it.
funkysquid··on Google Cloud Dev Advocate Jailed at SXSW
This is exactly the problem. The police are obviously not always in the wrong, but when people automatically assume that, regardless of what victims say, the police are in the right, that's why nothing changes. Nobody is calling for anyone to lose their jobs based on a tweet, we're calling for people to pay attention, listen to the victims, and make sure this sort of behavior is investigated and that people are held accountable.
funkysquid··on Google Cloud Dev Advocate Jailed at SXSW
If anybody is acting rashly here, I think it's probably the police officers who profiled him, threw him in jail, put a bag over his head, and then charged him (after 2 drinks) with "public intoxication", because " we're racist" isn't an official charge.

But please keep calm, internet, I'm sure the police were in the right.

funkysquid··on Upgrading from React 0.11.2 to 0.14.7 in 347 easy steps
Agreed - it seems like the largest problem they faced was using Scala build tools - so it's funny the blame is placed on Javascript.
funkysquid··on How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking
I don't use an ad blocker, but I'm thinking of installing one just for wired, if only to see how they implement this. And because I don't support hiding content from people who don't want to pay with their eyeballs and privacy, or maybe can't pay with money.
funkysquid··on Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden
Chelsea Manning
funkysquid··on Anywhere but Medium
This is more fun to read as the cross-post on Medium (https://medium.com/@davewiner/anywhere-but-medium-5450cb19f2...), especially the parts about how people can't criticize Medium on Medium.
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