Hacker News Reader

gascanon Millennials Are Causing the U.S. Divorce Rate to Plummet

Fights about finances are known to be one of the top causes of divorce.

gascanon Mosquitoes Genetically Modified to Crash Species That Spreads Malaria

Immune mosquitoes would be good too, though certainly more challenging to engineer than "kill everything".

gascanon Mosquitoes Genetically Modified to Crash Species That Spreads Malaria

But really, when has that ever happened before?

gascanon Mosquitoes Genetically Modified to Crash Species That Spreads Malaria

Yes, here it is again, the nearly ten year old magazine article written by an intern. Nothing could be more definitive.

gascanon Mosquitoes Genetically Modified to Crash Species That Spreads Malaria

Trust us, pyrus calleryana- sorry, I mean anopheles gambiae- definitely won't crossbreed with anything.

gascanon Mosquitoes Genetically Modified to Crash Species That Spreads Malaria

The tiger mosquito your parent mentions, though, is invasive. Ecologists are usually more than happy to target invasive species.

gascanon Android Studio 3.2

Do they work offline?

gascanon 'We're moving to higher ground': America's era of climate mass migration is here

And before you try to rationalize this with "per capita" arguments

This is moronic. After all, the other 49 states combined produce more greenhouse gas than California. Don't try to rationalize that with "per capita" or "per land area" arguments, the absolute numbers matter.

gascanon 'We're moving to higher ground': America's era of climate mass migration is here

Things get pretty weird when you start contemplating doing things at this scale. My father likes to tell of how, supposedly, McDonalds was considering introducing a new menu item, let's say it was an eggplant burger (I forget). The first question they had to answer was does the entire world produce enough eggplant?

Also, critically, if due to catastrophe you abandon your $100k home and buy another $100k home in another place, your move cost $200k.

gascanon After Five Years of Living in Trees, a Protest Community Is Being Evicted

I have no problems with cutting second growth, especially timber that was planted by man. It's specifically timber companies interested in harvesting old growth that irks me, because there's hardly any left, especially in Europe.

Going a little further, given that second growth harvesting is widely performed & commercially viable these days, seeking to log old growth comes across as simply looking for "easy money"- old growth hardwood fetches high prices, and you skip the work of planting.

gascanon After Five Years of Living in Trees, a Protest Community Is Being Evicted

Environmentalists are not the driving force to mine this coal, but many campaign heavily against nuclear, and the effect of decommissioning nuclear in Germany has been increased coal activity.

I'm not placing the blame at the feet of environmentalists, so much as ruing unintended consequences.

gascanon A Day in the Life of Americans

From what I recall, the Hadza (hunter gatherers of Tanzania) work ~6 hours a day. Sure, 8 hours a day is more, but same ballpark.

gascanon A Day in the Life of Americans

Well, we spend a third of our lives sleeping by design (which, you should rest reassured, improves the quality of your waking hours).

As for the third spent working, for as long as we have liked eating & having a roof over our heads, that has required steady effort.

gascanon After Five Years of Living in Trees, a Protest Community Is Being Evicted

Sure makes decommissioning nuclear (and bringing coal back online to replace it) look better and better. Good job, environmentalists.

gascanon After Five Years of Living in Trees, a Protest Community Is Being Evicted

RWE has undertaken measures to mitigate the mining’s impact

Mitigate the impact of clearcutting an entire forest? What a laugh.

gascanon Southern California just saw its longest streak of bad air in decades

Masks help with particulate, which I think is Asia's core problem (from all the coal). But most bad-air US cities struggle with ozone, and I don't think masks help with that.

gascanon Southern California just saw its longest streak of bad air in decades

Dang, would be nice if Android had more AQI built in. The 3rd party apps are not exactly rock solid.

gascanon Ranch Nation

I looked it up, and I guess I have to say I'm impressed it's not been reformulated into a mix of corn & soy product.

gascanon Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

if I run a tech company and wanted to target "people you are into the Python programming language", that's a group that will likely skew male...

"Yeah, um, we want programmers and I thought targeting people into Python was reasonable." That does sound reasonable. It's not meant as a proxy for gender, but for an interest/skill that is closely related to the job

Ok, I'm not deeply informed on Disparate Impact, but as you just described it, as intent doesn't matter, if your "job listing targeting Python developers" skews male and doesn't pass the 80% test, you're still discriminating & liable right?

gascanon Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

Intent is nine tenths of the law.

gascanon Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

If they aren't pay per view, there's much less incentive to show them to only certain users, and much less burden on the employer to be inclusive.

gascanon Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

I'm not saying facebook shouldn't police their listings. But were old school newspapers legally required to do that?

I'm asking, are we wanting facebook to do it because it's ethical? Or are we wanting to legally require them to?

gascanon Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

Are you suggesting Facebook do that helpfully to aide their customers in avoiding mishaps? Or are you prescribing this be government ordained & required?

gascanon Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

Yes, I was thinking about that as I wrote, one imperfect but possible fix would be "no pay per view for job listings". Which, for all I know, could already be the case.

gascanon Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

I'm not an ad man, but you have imperfect data about your customers, and I gather it's all about trying to predict what they might buy based on very imperfect/incomplete information about them. Plus, your ability to apply more advanced heuristics is constrained by your ability to develop them, both from a technical & marketing standpoint.

"User is a woman" would, in this hypothetical example, be one factor in your larger weighting algorithm. A weighting factor that is, might I add, quite easy to implement compared to detecting male performing arts majors with a specialty in costume design.

gascanon Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

While I see both sides of the argument, as long as the advertiser pays per view, it seems wrong to require the listing to target demographics that are almost certainly uninterested.

Your example of listing a job in Men's Health but not Cosmopolitan seems good. Technically not a perfect analogue as a woman always could buy Men's Health, but in practice very similar.

Spinning off into a different angle, what if an advertiser gets the most qualified female applicants advertising through LinkedIn, and the most qualified male applicants through Facebook? (Again assuming pay per view) Is it wrong for them to target women & men on separate platforms with separate ads? Utterly hypothetical of course.

Or yet a different angle, what if they have ad "A" and ad "B", each subtly designed to excite one of the sexes. Perhaps an ad for the Marines, one emphasizing toughness & grit, the other emphasizing teamwork & "stronger together". Target one at men, one at women. Legal?

To me it seems to come down to the overall behavior of the employer, not Facebook or any one ad.

gascanon Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

I honestly don't even understand the purpose of advertising anything to only men or only women.

If you pay per view, it's entirely rational to target towards the demographic that produces the most spend for your ad budget.

Why would you waste money advertising, e.g., mascara or sanitary pads to men? Sure, there's probably some infinitesimal fraction of men who would be interested, but targeting them profitably is not a trivial exercise.

gascanon Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

Just speculating, but looking at the photos from Fayetteville, it was totally car-scale. Sure, it was pedestrian-only, but just look at the pictures of the locale. Huge buildings, long distances, wide street.

This is not the best example but the first to pop to mind- compare to Pearl Street Mall, in Boulder, which seems to be doing well:

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0180565,-105.2792529,3a,75y,...

Which, just skimming, looks to be laid out similar to Church Street.

gascanon Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

Do you have a source for that? I had always understood the speed limit as simply being an objective, statutory codification of the subjective notion of "appropriate maximum speed for conditions"

Which fits well with dynamic speed limits cropping up in places that get regular bad weather

gascanon Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

If we insisted bicycles only be allowed on dedicated bicycle tracks, there would be no track because there would be no bicycles (because there was no track!)

As a bicyclist, I would love to have a dedicated network of bicycle track all over town. But it doesn't exist, yet.

Also, this is way fuzzier than you present. There's little conflict between cars and bikes on lightly traveled, spacious suburban streets or sleepy neighborhood county roads. Even on collectors & minor arterials, on an e-bike I travel about the same speed as a slow car.

Speed delta is not an incorrect observation, but varies in significance. In terms of priorities, highways are certainly top candidates for the first dedicated bike tracks.