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jdmichalon Tell HN: After 10 years of experiments, custom username emails receive no spam

Sometimes it's only partly supported, in the sense that the website will just break if your email has a `+`. I'm pretty sure I encountered that one with both Disney and Royal Caribbean reservation workflows just flat out breaking.

jdmichalon An incident impacting 5M accounts and private information on Twitter

Yes. The proper way to implement this flow is to ask for the information, and then present the exact same result screen regardless of the actions taken. Any additional information or action should be done exclusively through the contact information you have on record.

jdmichalon America’s favorite family outings are increasingly out of reach

Uh, so... That's basically Disney World right now. You must reserve your visit to the park, and there's a paid system (Genie+) to compete for ride times without waiting in line.

And there's a really good video someone did on the evolution and systems engineering behind the Genie+ / FastPass system:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yjZpBq1XBE

jdmichalon Mastercard and visa are the de facto regulators of porn

So am I understanding correctly that your assertion is that the card networks actually don't want to do business with these companies, and they use the law as an excuse?

I find it the claim that they would rather not do business with entire multi-billion-dollar markets pretty exceptional.

jdmichalon Mastercard and visa are the de facto regulators of porn

The law tells them who they can do business with, and they comply. That's not really a guise, unless me driving the speed limit is also a guise... If there's any challenge here, it's that such law restricts card networks' freedom of association. Which the US only has as an extension to freedom of speech... So I'm not sure that challenge would work, when the entire point is that certain forms of speech are what's being limited.

jdmichalon Mastercard and visa are the de facto regulators of porn

I'm confused... Where does due process come into play in a contractual relationship between two companies? It's applicable to governmental entities in criminal law. Contract disputes both do not involve the government outside of a request by the parties for litigation, and are civil and not criminal law.

jdmichalon Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

On the topic of Harry Potter and reimaginative fan-fiction, there's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, in which Harry is reimagined as a science- and technology-savvy rationalist.

http://www.hpmor.com/

It also, IMO, has better and fairer treatment of the houses than the canon, which I felt was pretty reductive. (Gryffindor good, Slytherin evil, the other two may as well not exist.) I think the books would have been better to have, say, Hermione in Ravenclaw, Ron in Hufflepuff, and Harry in Gryffindor. The only thing that would have had to been dropped was the silly "Gryffindor wins the house cup every year" bit.

jdmichalon Why is American administrative capacity in decline?

Interestingly, my neighborhood was mostly on a single company, due to several HOAs banding together and negotiating a group deal. But the company has now announced that it will no longer be honoring the group discount, so it's probably going to fracture again.

jdmichalon Why is American administrative capacity in decline?

Japan's GDP-per-capita has been roughly stable since the 90's:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

jdmichalon What a gas stove ban means for restaurants

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_source_heat_pump#In_cold_c...

A study by Natural Resources Canada found that cold climate air source heat pumps (CC-ASHPs) work in Canadian winters, based on testing in Ottawa (Ontario) in late December 2012 to early January 2013 using a ducted CC-ASHP. (The report does not explicitly state whether backup heat sources should be considered for temperatures below −30 °C. The record low for Ottawa is −36 °C.) The CC-ASHP provided 60% energy savings compared to natural gas (in energy units).[10] When considering energy efficiency in electricity generation however, more energy would be used with the CC-ASHP, relative to natural gas heating, in provinces or territories (Alberta, Nova Scotia, and the Northwest Territories) where coal-fired generation was the predominant method of electricity generation. (The energy savings in Saskatchewan were marginal. Other provinces use primarily hydroelectric and/or nuclear generation.) Despite the significant energy savings relative to gas in provinces not relying primarily on coal, the higher cost of electricity relative to natural gas (using 2012 retail prices in Ottawa, Ontario) made natural gas the less expensive energy source.

jdmichalon A 3400-year-old city emerges from the Tigris River

> Some people consider Runes alphabetic and some do not because it does not follow the order of ABC.

Even in narrow contexts, that's not how linguists use the term. Futhark runes are pretty clearly alphabets, because consonants and vowels are treated as independent symbols.

In the narrower sense, some scholars distinguish "true" alphabets from two other types of segmental script, abjads and abugidas. These three differ from each other in the way they treat vowels: abjads have letters for consonants and leave most vowels unexpressed; abugidas are also consonant-based but indicate vowels with diacritics to or a systematic graphic modification of the consonants. In alphabets in the narrow sense, on the other hand, consonants and vowels are written as independent letters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet#Types

jdmichalon Ask HN: Are companies preparing to end Remote?

I have a story very similar to yours. I worked in the office for a total of one week in March 2020 before we voluntarily switched to remote. (In Florida, so no real lockdowns.) We were expecting it to be a few weeks, maybe a couple months...

Now we're in the process of releasing our leased office, and renting a much smaller space for occasional collaboration. My team, which is only 7 people to start with, live in 4 different metros.

There is no back for us as a company. This is how we work now.

For the OP: I would take a look at how companies are hiring. If their job reqs are all for specific locations and no remote listings, then I would expect that you would be correct for that company. If their listings are remote, then I would expect that they're probably beyond that point.

jdmichalon The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

The article makes it very clear where things were exploited. Especially the circumnavigation of the new token limit seems pretty relevant to the discussion of whether this was playing within the intent.

If he’d wanted, Medjedovic could now have traded $3,200 worth of Sushi for DEFI5 tokens worth $1,172,000. And had he simply done that, Indexed would have been fine. The protocol places limits on the amount of a new token that users can swap into the pool, so he would have been able to extract only about 1.5% of the pool’s value—which, given transaction fees, wouldn’t have been profitable for him.

Instead, Medjedovic’s script took out another flash loan consisting of $2.4 million worth of Sushi tokens. And rather than swapping them into the pool, it gifted them to it—a seemingly irrational move that Indexed’s algorithm wasn’t designed to handle. The “donation” overwhelmed the pool and circumvented its usual trade limit for new tokens. This allowed Medjedovic’s program to freely trade overvalued Sushi for undervalued DEFI5 tokens, then cash those out for the pool’s underlying assets, pay back the loans, and keep the rest, now worth $11.9 million. The attack on the CC10 pool brought the total haul to $16 million.

jdmichalon The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

Broken slot machines do happen, and it's been made very clear that the player does not benefit.

https://www.aol.com/2016-11-02-broken-slot-machine-dupes-wom...

https://www.foxnews.com/us/not-a-winner-oregon-woman-denied-...

However, this works both ways. If the mistake is in the favor of the player, they are obligated to pay out:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-slot-machine-in-las-vega...

jdmichalon The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

And what if the vending machine measures coins by weight, and you so happen to have a "coin" that is just a properly-weighted blank. You're still interacting with the vending machine as technically intended. But by not inserting the correct amount of money, you are not interacting with it as intended by the creators.

The smart contract implements a technical intent, just like the vending machine. But that technical intent will always have limitations. Some exploits are non-destructive, such as properly-weighted blanks. Some are destructive, such as crowbars. But let's not pretend that they aren't, in fact, exploits.

jdmichalon Kids are far behind in school

Personally, I also don't care much what language I'm in. But not everyone has a brain that works that way.

Also, some of the people I'm referring to are also of non-traditional backgrounds. Meaning they don't have a foundation in abstract computer science in order to ground such transitions.

I'm also not counting changes like, "modify this one if-statement to work this way." I'm talking about actual meaningful changes.

jdmichalon Kids are far behind in school

I'm going to repost a comment of mine from two years ago. This is not an unknown thing to school boards.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23012403

The wife of one of my good friends was on the county school board for 12 years. According to her, it was an unspoken secret was that parental involvement was the biggest predictor of / contributor to student success. The reason it was taboo was because you absolutely cannot expect anything from the parents. It was political suicide.

I would put dollars on the table that such is already happening for every parent that is willing and able to do it, because they were already doing it before too.

jdmichalon Kids are far behind in school

Sometimes I'm really surprised that people have such a hard time extrapolating from their own experiences learning to children and school.

Individuals will tend to learn things at their own pace. Individuals will tend to learn different things at different paces.

Example: I despised history in school. The only subject I ever scored less than a B in during a quarter. I discovered it was mostly just down to how it was being taught, as a series of factual but mostly disjointed events. I found that I enjoy learning about history, as long as I'm understanding the complex causation and linking between those different events.

Example: I've hired people that had zero experience in one of our programming languages. They typically end up completing their first PR in that language within a month or two -- with assistance, of course. People tend to pick things up pretty fast when it's part of their job expectations. (I always make it clear during interviewing and the hiring process that such an expectation would be present.)

Example: My son didn't begin to talk until after his third birthday. Now he is almost entirely caught up, with only minor speech issues.

jdmichalon Kids are far behind in school

Grice's maxim of relation: Be relevant.

https://psychology.fandom.com/wiki/Gricean_maxims#Maxim_of_R...

jdmichalon Kids are far behind in school

There would be huge capacity problems associated with combining entire years of students. Many teachers, classrooms, and entire schools are already on the edge of overcapacity.

jdmichalon SQLite may become foundational for digital progress

That's why my favorite ORM in Java is MyBatis. It doesn't do SQL generation; it only maps objects to SQL parameters and results to objects.

jdmichalon SQLite may become foundational for digital progress

Isn't "LINQ without the underlying SQL" simply list comprehensions?

jdmichalon Judge orders trial in Tesla autopilot manslaughter case

There's two signs before that notifying of both the upcoming speed change and the traffic signal:

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.8729084,-118.2881048,3a,75y,...

I'm also extremely surprised that there's a 20 mph drop. While it's only a recommendation, the Uniform Vehicle Code and Model Traffic Ordinance suggests never changing the speed more than 10 mph at a time, and having no more than six such changes in a mile.

See page 28 of this PDF, as I was looking for this information specifically in relation to the Florida DOT, which does a pretty good job of following this rule:

https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/speedmgt/ref_mats/fhwasa1304/res...

jdmichalon Twitter Deal Temporarily on Hold

Oh I 100% agree with you on the chances that this means anything. There would have to be some evidence that they just made up a number, or invented a methodology that they knew would drastically undercount, or some-such. Just running a different methodology that returns a bigger number is not sufficient to break these clauses.

jdmichalon Twitter Deal Temporarily on Hold

Any percentage that was not calculated using a methodology? As HillRat said:

* As long as they used _a_ methodology,

* and that methodology spat out 5%,

* and there's no material information to indicate that anyone thought the methodology was inaccurate or otherwise wrong,

Then there's probably nothing actionable there.

jdmichalon Twitter Deal Temporarily on Hold

It's rather silly to assume the clause would be written that narrowly. I replied above with what would likely be a relevant clause, which covers any and all information supplied by Twitter.

jdmichalon Twitter Deal Temporarily on Hold

Of course they didn't write it that specifically. That would be extraordinarily silly. One writes the clause to be as general as possible, while also covering the primary concern. Witness, page 25:

> Section 4.7 Information Supplied. None of the information supplied or to be supplied by or on behalf of the Company or any of its Subsidiaries expressly for inclusion or incorporation by reference in the proxy statement relating to the matters to be submitted to the Company’s stockholders at the Company Stockholders’ Meeting (such proxy statement and any amendments or supplements thereto, the “Proxy Statement”) shall, at the time the Proxy Statement is first mailed to the Company’s stockholders and at the time of the Company Stockholders’ Meeting to be held in connection with the Merger, contain any untrue statement of material fact or omit to state any material fact required to be stated therein or necessary to make the statements therein, in light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading at such applicable time, except that no representation or warranty is made by the Company with respect to statements made therein based on information supplied, or required to be supplied, by Parent or its Representatives in writing expressly for inclusion therein. The Proxy Statement will comply as to form in all material respects with the provisions of the Securities Act and the Exchange Act, and the rules and regulations promulgated thereunder.

jdmichalon The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

It's a grant from a private organization. It's at worst a breach of contract. And if he simply called it a salary paid to himself to continue development and marketing of the app, that probably successfully clears any hurdles.

jdmichalon Netflix’s big power clash and rivalries behind the crash

I'm amazed that people didn't see this coming as the end game of the "cut the cord" transition... This was always where it was going to end up. Netflix proved the concept, but it ends up that having an early-mover advantage doesn't matter when you don't own your product, just the platform. But of course what people are actually paying for is the product. And it's been shown time and again that people are willing to put up with "good enough" platforms as long as it has the product they want.

It's the downside of all "content platform" plays. There's nothing stopping a new platform from taking over YouTube or Facebook or Twitter. All it takes is the actual content producers moving to a different platform and poof there it goes.

jdmichalon We need someone who has done “it” before

You hit it pretty spot on. There's still a lot of management expected at those levels, it's just of an influential type instead of an authoritative type. Which is often even harder to wield effectively. You're still expected to go out and force-multiply, because the bottom line is a single person worth of productivity can only go so far.