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green_lunch

47 karma · joined May 7, 2016

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green_lunch··on Why You Should Hire a Gamer for Remote Work
Maybe...and maybe not. Hopefully they won't decide to play WoW in the background and not get any work done.

I've had this experience with remote teams and sadly had to let many 'gamers' go.

green_lunch··on Why Autocorrect for Passwords Is a Great Idea
“Websites should be changing their password policies to make users’ lives easier. The security degradation is pretty small.”

Security isn't supposed to be convenient. Autocorrecting passwords sounds like a bad idea all-around and will be exploited.

green_lunch··on My Social Network Startup. Thoughts?
"nothing posted in HangBee, except for listings in Marketplaces, is ever permanently saved, no matter what. Keep reading to learn about everything HangBee has to offer; we hope you join us!"

If this gets big enough, you will eventually need to keep some sort of record to comply with various law enforcement agencies.

I honestly don't see anything different than any other social networking site. Social networking sites are expensive to run and difficult to monetize.

Eventually you will need more money to keep the site running and when you do, privacy will go out the door.

green_lunch··on Patients are the Health Care System's Unpaid Labor
Leave it to Vox to expect the government and the system to figure out all of life's problems for you. This has to be written by a millennial.

Would you say that I am 'unpaid labor' because I have to do all the work of finding a good university? How about buying a new car?

I've dealt with many government agencies and if you think government-run care will be any better than what you describe, you're dreaming.

green_lunch··on Uber and Lyft Are Adding Jobs, Not Just Stealing Them
They are adding jobs.

However, we now having more people making less money for essentially the same job. It's a win for consumers, because it's more convenient and in some cases, cheaper.

But it's a lose for the people that actually made a decent living driving who now are competing with college kids that are doing the same thing in their spare time without having any of the same startup costs.

Uber and Lyft removed the barrier to entry by breaking the law and the monopoly the Taxi unions had over the entire industry. But the result is lower wages and benefits.

green_lunch··on Salary Negotiation
"We do not allow individuals to negotiate their salary separately from their position. If you have the same position, you make the same salary."

This is great from a company perspective, but it essentially allows a company to get an employee at a much cheaper rate. Employees with more experience will get the same pay rate for the same job as someone with potentially much less.

Since all companies don't do this, I probably wouldn't ever work for your company knowing this is your policy. I bring much more value to a company with all of the experience and knowledge that I've gained.

At my last 9-5 job, I was able to get paid almost 20% more than many of my co-workers because of my negotiating skills and experience.

I just have to shake my head when I see so many people fighting for less power, rights, and inevitably less money and calling it a 'win'.

But, this doesn't really matter to me anymore. I've owned my own company for the last 5 years and don't need to negotiate my own salary.

green_lunch··on A Sensible Fix For TSA Security Lines
"This is exactly wrong. Profiling does not increase safety whatsoever. Bruce Schneier argues it much better than I would:"

You may say it doesn't 'increase safety', but Israel is a great example of it working. The attacks, hijacks, and deaths have nose dived to nearly 0. They have a hybrid system that involves both random checking and profiling.

I'm not saying we should lock up anyone that fits a specific racial profile. The problem is that when we use data and risk assessment to question specific people that may be suspicious, it's seen as racist if the person is anything but white.

The two articles you linked mention hijackers that happened pre-911. I don't think people are hijacking planes and diverting them to central america nor do we have IRA militants bombing planes.

We need a hybrid system between random checking and profiling. Random checks work so far, but will not help with long lines because everyone needs to be checked equally.

To reduce long lines, we either need to scale-back security (which is a bad idea) or use information and data to make the process more efficient (IE: profiling).

Some profiling is a good thing, but we can't completely rely on it.

green_lunch··on A Sensible Fix For TSA Security Lines
"other than race, religion, or national origin."

Let's look at the terror watch list: I can bet 9/10 people on the list are from similar middle eastern countries, similar skin color and are from the same or similar religion.

Profiling based on this information isn't profiling based on any of these things, but based on risk factors and previous history.

The problem is that you can't even profile based on obvious history without also being accused of profiling based on religion or skin color.

This is what I'm talking about when I refer to 'political correctness'. Suspicious people can't be singled out without the PC police coming out in full force.

"ignore political correctness and do it based on something other than race, religion, or national origin."

I wish the terrorists bombing planes and killing innocent people were from different countries with different religions, but it's just not reality.

green_lunch··on Steve Blank: 'VCs Won't Admit They're in a Ponzi Scheme'
I think it was worse in the late 90s early 00s. There is this documentary called 'e-dreams' that came out in 2001. It documents a delivery startup that didn't charge anything to deliver products to customers.

They had virtually no business model (and lost money on every order) and got millions in startup capital. The whole company imploded within a year, but some of the interviews with the executives of the company are pretty telling: they never intended on making a profit. The intent was to either get bought out by a larger company or get an IPO and bank the proceeds.

E-dreams is a really good documentary for anyone interested in seeing a small sliver out of the early days of the first .com boom/bust.

I watch it once-a-year to remind me of the craziness.

green_lunch··on A Sensible Fix For TSA Security Lines
We had virtually no airline security in the 1970s and there were hijack attempts every couple of months..including innocent people dying and a plane that was eventually blown up with no passengers on board.

I sure as hell wouldn't fly if this was going on now.

The real problem is that we aren't allowed to profile.

Because we can't focus on a specific subset of travelers that are suspicious (based on data or behavior), everyone is treated as a threat and we get long lines as a result.

We can learn a lot from Israel:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-wagner/what-israeli-air...

They probably have more terrorist threats than anyone else in the world and have prevented nearly all attacks without the long lines. Mostly through a combination of profiling and hiring specially trained agents instead of $10/hour rent-a-cops to handle security. There's a reason why European Airports are targeted for attack, even though Israel is the main target.

At some point we need to make a choice: political correctness or safety.

green_lunch··on Coding without Google
It's because programming has evolved. More business owners are also already tech savvy because they grew up with a computer, Ipad, and phone.

In the beginning, programming was more fun. No oversight, bosses that don't really know what you are doing, programming at one point in time was treated like magic.

You glue together other pieces of code because in most cases, because the wheel has already been invented. This really was the dream of open source and with all of the free software and libraries out there, it's becoming a reality.

It's also going to drastically reduce the wage of a programmer over time. Most businesses don't need to hire an engineer to create a complicated library. They can hire someone with much less skill to use an already existing library to get what they need done.

Since the skills to get the job done will decrease, the supply of potential developers will increase and wages will decrease.

green_lunch··on Europe eyes new rules for online platforms
This is a good way to keep content out of Europe permenantly.
green_lunch··on An industry that helps Chinese cheat their way into and through US colleges
Most business owners don't hire an employee 'just because you know them'.

They try to find the best candidate through the people they already know.

It's all about risk/reward. A random candidate will most likely be a higher risk than a know candidate.

Would you rather be roomates with a random person on craigslist or a friend of a friend?

green_lunch··on Twitter Remains Broken
Try being Conservative or Republican on any platform online and you will be harassed, bullied, and silenced. I've even been harassed for supporting the wrong library in an open source project.

Harassment and bullying seem to be just fine, as long as you are going against the current liberal narrative of the day.

Twitter isn't broken. We just need to grow thicker skins. I've been online since I was 12 (I'm almost 40 now) and have had the worst of the worst things said about me. I ignore them all, because frankly, it doesn't matter.

In addition to this, many of the people hurling these insults are teenagers or even kids. Since we don't have an accurate way to determine a person's age, I really wonder just how many of these new harassment laws are being passed due to a 10 year old insulting an adult (especially movements like Gamergate).

All of these 'safe spaces' are going to create generations of adults that can't cope with the many things they will face in the real world, including harassment and criticism (which is now being called harassment).

green_lunch··on [dead]
Programming, like anything of substance, takes time, energy, and discipline.
green_lunch··on When does moderation become censorship?
It becomes censorship when a moderator removes a comment or discussion based purely on personal beliefs and disagreements.

Moderation should be about removing the trolls, not what it has become, which is censorship.

It feels like many people personally enjoy moderating down disagreements because they don't get any actual power in their own lives.

It's one of the reasons I stay away from most online discussions these days: because nobody can be open and honest. It really makes me wonder if this is the reason why secret groups like the masons were created. Back in those days, instead of getting moderating down, you were killed or attacked.

green_lunch··on Ask HN: Why not invest in random companies and hire random employees?
99% of the new companies I see on HN and elsewhere have either no business plan or a company that will most likely fail. Randomly investing in these companies without any actual effort to mitigate risk, will result in throwing most of your money away.

For employees, it's the same thing. It's all about risk and determining if the employee can do the job and be a good fit for the company.

"We know that stock picking isn't any more effictive than random chance (that's the theory behind index funds)"

If this were the case, why aren't index funds comprised of startups and penny stocks? Index funds are usually comprised of stable companies that have an excellent track record. This means it's not random.

"Maybe the same is true for investing in startups and hiring employees."

It's not the same for stocks and it's not the same for startups or employees. You need a way to filter.

Did you read the article?

This is at the bottom:

"They'd hold a massive nationwide contest. They'd give out piles of cash like nobody else had before. And Lariat was in."

It appears they have a contest, which means it isn't random. It's a process to mitigate risk.

green_lunch··on Top developers can have a life outside coding
I started my own company 5 years ago to have a life outside of coding.

The business depends on code, but I can choose when to go on vacation and work from home or at the office when I need to.

It also helps that my wife runs the company with me.

I finally made the decision to quit when my last boss called an emergency meeting on new years eve over webex, because she wanted to go to a party and also get our product released. She also is the one that caused our product to be delayed by at least a month due to her inability to manage the project.

green_lunch··on How Trump’s troll army is cashing in on his campaign
Google created an entire company that is essentially a 'Troll Army' for Obama during his second term and now Hillary.

Sanders has a 'troll army' built in to his campaign, because he has such a large percentage of tech-savvy youth, they flood most political discussions online, regardless if it's factual.

This is called politics. Every politician does this. I'm not sure why we are singling out Trump.

green_lunch··on Airbar: Turns any laptop display in a touch screen
My laptop has a touch screen and I had to disable it. If dust or any moisture gets on the screen, it goes crazy and I have to shut my computer down and clean the screen off.
green_lunch··on Moving Away from Python 2
I finally was able to start new projects in Python 3 because most major libraries are compatible.
green_lunch··on Ask HN: Should I be concerned about this job offer?
Chances are, if they went to a University to get an app developed, they want it cheap. I've been in on more than one meeting where this was suggested.

Just be honest about the whole project. Let them know what they are getting into and set a plan from the start. If they decide to keep adding on requirements or changing things around, let them know how much time it will add onto the project.

You may never get the project done and it may be really complicated, but it will be great experience. I have many projects like these that I worked on after college.

green_lunch··on Software Licenses and Failed States
What most likely will happen is that if the person likes you (IE: not some big company), they will allow you to use their code. If you are a huge corporation profiting from it, you will get sued for misuse.

This is exactly why you don't use unlicensed code in any commercial application.

green_lunch··on Stoned drivers are safer than drunk ones, new federal data show
It's studies like this that have caused people in my city to support legally driving while high. I've seen so many people that somehow think there is no effect on driving skills.

I'm all for legalization, but I will not support the potential of endangering other people.

green_lunch··on A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela
Regardless of your reasons, the end result will be more paywalls or entire articles that are actually ads (this is what yahoo does now).
green_lunch··on Frontiers in language learning tech – how to learn Chinese today
The best tech. for me is still Anki. It allows me to add new words pretty much anywhere I hear them and study when I'm on the go. It also is smart enough to know which words I know and need to work on.

All of these new sites popping up are really just gimmicks. Studying a language is damn hard and needs complete dedication to get anywhere past the basics.

I'm on my second foreign language and I have joined a few meetup groups to meet other people that are also interested. Most people give up after awhile. I think I know only 1 or 2 people that have continued to study a foreign language as long as I have (6+ years).

Until we have universal translators, nothing will replace hard work and dedication. These sites are catering to the people that want an easy way to learn a foreign language. Some short-cut that gets around all of the boring, rote, memorization.

What I have found is that the same type of effort it requires to learn a foreign language is the same that is required to start a business and make it successful.

green_lunch··on Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?
It's because the education systems are liberal. Before anyone but the wealthy were able to afford college, most institutions had a conservative slant.
green_lunch··on Amazon Reviews: How We Spot the Fakes
This isn't really 'gaming' the system. It's good customer service. Even one Bad Amazon review can be death to a business on Amazon.

I think it's a little ridiculous that so much power is given to many buyers that only want to take out their anger on someone, even if it isn't really the fault of the seller.

I used to be an Amazon seller and quit because so many people would leave negative feedback over unrealistic expectations.

It seems to be the M.O. of the millennial generation.

green_lunch··on Tech layoffs more than double in Bay Area
If your company still isn't profitable and needs that next round of VC to survive, be very worried.

I've seen the signs and gone through multiple layoffs over the years.

green_lunch··on The Miserable French Workplace and the Fight to Change It
I'm constantly amazed that people will fight to have less power over their own lives.

If you do get a job, the same law that allows you to have a long-term contract essentially makes you a slave to the company. It's so hard to get, it makes it that much harder to leave.

Owning your own business is nearly impossible due to the red tape and regulations involved, so the entire economic landscape is either a large company or the government.

The real problem in France is that it doesn't really give any incentive for a company to start there, and it certainly doesn't give it a chance to grow.

This will only become more apparent over time when the global economy gets bad and more companies pull out and move to more favorable countries.

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