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gaoshan

2,088 karma · joined March 9, 2009

Consider other people's perspectives.
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gaoshan··on LinkedIn is laying off nearly 700 employees
This is actually a great question because LinkedIn has become ubiquitous in the professional world and I cannot, for the life of me, think of anything that is currently available to replace it. Could someone build it? Sure. Could someone gain the mindshare (and marketshare that it has)? Someday?
gaoshan··on California governor vetoes bill that would have set a $35 cap for insulin
But he's not governing on the Right. He's governing from much closer to the center.
gaoshan··on Searches for Noah's Ark
I would assume that if an old boat were found that it had nothing to do with the Ark of Christian mythos. There would be no way to "verify" it because the entire story rests on a foundation of faith, not fact. Where faith and fact do coincide faith likes to use that overlap as evidence of truth whereas fact cannot do that because faith does not require evidence (and there are so many competing faiths but facts are a bit more consistent).

Kind of like how if all religions and all scientific and mathematical knowledge were somehow irrevocably lost, all of the science and math would eventually come back just as it was but none of the religions would (in spite of the protestations of fervent believers).

The flood story is present in so very many mythologies that there likely was some historical event in that region but people back then could be forgiven from thinking that such a flood covered the entire world as it covered what little they new of it.

gaoshan··on Why aren’t America’s students showing up?
People refusing to vote for the greater good because they want to preserve their own wealth (well, their wealth wouldn't be at risk but for some even given up $10 is intolerable in the service of society at large) is a great argument for not allowing them this decision. Some things should not be optional and if you want to live in a certain society you should have to help support that society's civil function. Letting people opt-in or out of critical institutions like public education seems like a road to disaster to me.
gaoshan··on Milk Tea Addiction
I'm not so sure about Coke or beer being worse. That sort of tea generally has just as much sugar as a can of coke (and the synthetic creamer is probably just as bad as the rest of what's in a coke). Both are quite unhealthy for you. Beer is a different beast altogether with both positive and negative properties.
gaoshan··on China's ancient water pipe networks show no evidence of a centralized authority
It's amazing how similar the construction of the pipe segments and the pipe network is to ones I've seen from Roman times. Makes you wonder how many times such a thing has been reinvented over the millennia and how interesting it is that common solutions seem to result despite a (probable?) lack of communication on the situation.
gaoshan··on Bicyclists Deserve the Right to Free Movement
Much of a city in China I have spent a lot of time in (Hangzhou) has protected bike lanes with their own signals and crossings. They do still interact with traffic at the crossings but the lanes are wide and well protected from vehicles. I really like using them and wish we had something like that where I live in the US.
gaoshan··on Amazon CEO reportedly told remote employees: It’s probably not going to work out
I have a friend there that was hired into a mid level developer role and he hates it for many reasons (from management style to the personality of teammates to how code gets reviewed and pushed and more). Just biding his time to get enough years under his belt for his next move but he ranks it last in places he's worked (but first in pay, which is why he is sticking it out).
gaoshan··on Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode
Agreed. At our company the technical interview involves walking a dev through a working app that uses the same stack we develop with. There are bugs to solve, potential optimizations that exist and the dev explains and walks through the client/server/database portions (leaning into one or the other as needed). No tricky questions or puzzles... just actual code (a simplified subset but still real, working code).
gaoshan··on Why Tailwind CSS Won
Most folks would agree with you that we can use what we like but that isn't the reason for the vitriol. I think most of the vitriol comes from the way the it is presented as "the winner" when a lot of people either actively dislike it or would never chose to use it.

I dislike Tailwind and would never choose it so seeing it presented as if it climbed to the top of some pile makes me laugh out loud and based on the comments there are a fair few people that agree. That said, use what works for you and I won't try to claim my choices as "winners" in some undeclared contest.

gaoshan··on Remains found in China may belong to third human lineage
Most people outside of China. Not just "the West".
gaoshan··on Airlines are a lot like central banks (2020)
Many small merchants just refuse as well. Try to use Amex at the local Chinese food marts around me and they will not take them (and I don't blame them).
gaoshan··on Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)
If WeChat was not permitted on iPhones, iPhones would not sell in China.
gaoshan··on Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983
If that's the case, that the federal government backing the loans is what permits the increases, then why not just have the federal government pay up front and cut out the loan portion? Might give them more power to negotiate lower prices. Though I suppose the loan industry wouldn't like getting cut out of their middleman position, eh, and politicians probably wouldn't stand for that egregious cutting of profits.
gaoshan··on How the great firewall of China detects and blocks fully encrypted traffic [pdf]
That might be it. I was there every year for about a 15 year period but this may have been around the time of the 2010 Expo. Though I was not in hotels, I was in apartments (ones owned and lived in by Chinese, not foreigners).
gaoshan··on The downfall of National Geographic
Content creator, not aggregator. National Geographic generated the stories itself and provided some of the best photography obtainable in the history of the medium.
gaoshan··on How the great firewall of China detects and blocks fully encrypted traffic [pdf]
Many years back I was running a socks proxy for access while in China and I found that it worked great in Shanghai but was rapidly blocked (or degraded in some fashion) in Hangzhou. That seemed internal and not edge but I do no really know how they were interfering with it. Given Hangzhou's tech expertise it just may be the ISP there was more capable and up to date?
gaoshan··on Ask HN: Is GitHub down?
My team ran some code that crushed our Github actions very shortly before this outage. Nervous laughter around the office that it was us.
gaoshan··on Monster gravitational waves spotted for first time
It's my understanding that LIGO is too small to be able to detect such waves, hence the use of pulsar timings.
gaoshan··on Westfield Walks Away from Downtown San Francisco Mall Property
I first visited San Francisco almost 20 years ago and I loved it. I last went in late 2019 and I was horrified. The change was night and day from my perspective (and depressing as I saw this place that used to have a special vibe to me turned into what felt like, as an outside with limited experience to be clear, a dystopian wasteland)
gaoshan··on Is liberalism digging its own demographic grave? (2022)
Isn't human population already too high for the planet (or at least headed that way)? I would think that a trend in the other direction is good, on the whole and over the long run.
gaoshan··on Is liberalism digging its own demographic grave? (2022)
A small, anecdotal example of this... there is a family in my community that is part of the conservative christian organization called "Quiverfull" that believes in having very large families. The one in our community has 12 children. They see it as creating members for their religion but I would be surprised if more than a couple of these kids end up following along (based on who the kids are turning out to be).
gaoshan··on Reddit's Recently Announced API Changes, and the future of /r/blind
I'm a mod (of an insignificant subreddit), have been active for 15+ years, 6 figure karma, even had the single most upvoted comment on all of reddit one day...they notify you and give you an award when that happens in case you wonder.

My feelings about the site have evolved so much over the years but in the past couple of years the vibe has been turning consistently negative. I'm getting fed up and I imagine a lot of others are as well and I can't imagine this will end up benefiting Reddit in general.

gaoshan··on Oath Keepers leader Rhodes sentenced to 18 years for Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy
Good. Real consequences are exactly what is needed for the people behind that event.
gaoshan··on So, how do you refill an aquifer?
In the case of a place like Florida, parts of the gigantic aquifer that extends under that State and up in Georgia get backfilled by brackish water once depleted below a certain level and this effectively destroys it, preventing refilling or refreshing because of the salt content that gets introduced.
gaoshan··on Gamers 50-plus are a growing force in the tech market
This is me though I was never really a gamer growing up. As a child I loved playing Adventure on my friend's Atari 3600 but never had a game console of my own until recently (I bought an Xbox). Now I play, of all things, Fortnite (mainly because it was free to try out, lol) and I'm not terrible... probably pretty good for my age group (absolutely slower than the kids, though). As a programmer I am still fairly mentally agile but this game feels like it helps. Doesn't hurt that our office has a Playstation and I can, on occasion, play there much to the surprise of some younger folks.
gaoshan··on I Quit Reddit in 1 Day
I agree that Reddit is doing a good job of harming its usability (and the overall experience with mods that wield the ban hammer for the slightest disagreements, for example) I do not understand this sentiment for old reddit. I've been on the site for over 15 years and while I do pine for the old days (when comments and content were of much higher quality) the old UI holds no such sway over me.
gaoshan··on VW, Rivian, Nissan, BMW lose access to U.S. EV tax credits
The price of EVs is the only thing keeping me from replacing my 13 year old car. Everything I would consider buying is just slightly too high for my budget and needs.
gaoshan··on NPR quits Twitter after being labeled as 'state-affiliated media'
State affiliated media indicates state run media... i.e. propaganda for the State. NPR is in no way propaganda for the State. It's probably the furthest a media outlet could be from such a thing. This as an example of people putting their own political ideologies above all else and labeling the things that don't necessarily support them as propaganda. It's wrong and short sighted.
gaoshan··on Italy's ChatGPT ban attracts EU privacy regulators
Right or wrong this is just going to lead to others taking the lead and accelerating away in this technology.
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