Hacker News Reader

jefbon Statement from Mark Zuckerberg

Yesterday free speech was so important that platforms must syndicate all topics equally and fairly. Today these platforms are so extremely dangerous to society that they should be shut down entirely.

I’m not a fb apologist by any means, but maybe we should stop blaming these websites for everything and invest in education instead.

jefbon YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

What's the difference between whispering "fire" in a crowded movie theater vs. yelling it out loud? - is it simply the volume of ones voice? Might some intangible like intent have something to do with it? How do you even go about quantifying that? What if everyone laughs at your outburst? What if they trample each other to death?

I feel as though this crowd gets wrapped around the axel on these kinds of questions - anything with too much ambiguity that can't be code golfed into the tersest possible formal logic statement.

When Justice Stewart attempted to define what "hardcore pornography" actual __is__ he simply wrote "I know it when I see it" (1964 Jacobellis v. Ohio).

That's about as good as one can do in some cases.

jefbon Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

Netflix is absolutely a tech company. Everyone wants to be "tech" because the valuation multiples are higher due to non-linear revenue potential per unit invested. That's pretty much what a "tech" company means today - the cost of acquiring user 1 might be millions, but user 2 is pennies. The only way to push those user n+1 costs so low is with heavy tech automation, which Netflix et al. has in spades.

jefbon My rant about React

It's simple - just pick the best tool for the job. If whatever you're building only needs flat file storage just use flat file storage instead of bemoaning the database as overrated.

jefbon Good data scientist, bad data scientist

I don't think there is a single correct answer here, but I'll offer a few insights from personal experience.

Firstly, valuable data tends to live in places accessible via web technology. Maybe you need to fetch a bunch of XML files from an FTP site? Having a clear understanding of all the nuances you're about to encounter will set you up for success.

Secondly, valuable data tends to be generated by web technology itself. Understanding that lifecycle can inform analytical strategy.

Finally, some data scientists add value by informing decision makers. One of the most powerful things you can do for them is give them a mobile friendly secure web experience that puts the data they need directly at their finger tips. While yes, Tableau et al. are an option here, you'll be ahead of your peers by knowing how to DIY it when it counts.

jefbon Everything Old Is New Again: Binary Security of WebAssembly [pdf]

There needs to be an obligatory "but with better UX" attached to the end of every old is new again statement.

jefbon The True Meaning of Technical Debt (2020)

We don't know the future. Since that's not going to change, we need to stop blaming technical debt on the repercussions of that fact.

We want houses before we can save enough money to afford them. We want applications before we know how many users will be slamming our servers. The common denominator here is time. We're trading in time - the only question to ask is whether it's being done for the right reason.

The wrong reasoning is usually something like "it would take too long to understand how to do it better".

When a better solution is understood to have obvious merit but nebulous short term applicability - that's probably good technical debt to take on.

jefbon The Drivers Cooperative

Juno[1] tried something like this in NYC back in the mid-2010's. They ended up getting acquired by Gett and discontinued their equity share ethos.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(company)

Edit: Typo

jefbon Launch HN: Taste (YC W21) – Recreate nice restaurant experiences at home

Congrats on your launch! I do believe that there exists some space between Blue Apron and Tock for this, however for me personally, the ease of the restaurant experience is a huge part of it's appeal. I can access high quality food via Tock & competitors but the added friction of being the sous-chef, garnisher, dishwasher, front of house, etc. makes this not really appeal to me once going to a restaurant becomes possible again.

jefbon An updated daily front page of The New York Times as artwork on your wall

Self-build can easily meet those specs (minus OS + monitor + peripherals).

Example $2333 build: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/t4FjZZ

jefbon A Black Hole at the Center of Earth

This week on "Hacker News after dark"...

jefbon Pentagon's UFO Unit to Disclose Some of Its Findings to the Public

A craft able to manipulate gravitational fields as a means of propulsion would likely not need to airbrake through the atmosphere to slow down.

jefbon What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture, part 2

I'm wondering this myself - and I think it's worth doing the math to sort out. To me, the essential question is "Is it possible to grow produce in a decentralized fashion?" i.e solar panels on the roof of a large apartment complex generating enough power to sustain the building.

Could a hypothetical FarmPod3000™ exist at a reasonable scale? I mean, people built greenhouses before right? Could such a system be economically viable at the size of a shipping container? A family home? Staten Island?

To be clear, I don't think the FarmPod3000™ would disrupt 90M acres of corn farms - we actually eat <10% of that anyways[1].

We should factor in the +/- environmental & public health impacts of such a system to the viability calculation as well.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/07/14/how-c...

jefbon The Economics of Clean Code

I agree, I tend to find myself assuming everything not "clean" is technical debt - putting things in these three buckets has helped (YMMV).

1. If you don't have users, you don't have technical debt (you might have lot's of #2 though). You could frag the entire app and the only thing of value (not potential value) lost would be your job. Debt implies value was quickly received in exchange for a flexible re-payment schedule (of time in this case, not money); if the code is not actively being used to save/spend/gain some resource then that value exchange has not happened yet.

2. Correct Code* that is unclean and could be improved in <= time that it took to write is just bad code. Fix this code now.

3. Correct Code that is unclean and would take significantly more time to improve than it took to write is technical debt (but only if you have users). This is where a balance needs to be struck between business needs and development needs. Manage this code carefully.

*code that correctly implements business logic, incorrect code is always bad - no matter how long it took to write.

jefbon AI Update, Late 2019

Sure, take some pot shots - some are valid criticisms - but OpenAI's Rubic's cube solver being lame does not mean AI needs to be re-evaluated.

Sure, AI has its faults; the tantalizing cost savings of automation has created some negative feedback loops - might that be more deserving of the question "what in the hell are we trying to accomplish and how exactly did we get here in the first place?"

A Rubic's cube solver is the problem? Really?

OpenAI (of now infamous Rubic's cube failure :p) released a hide-and-seek demo a few months back that gave me literal goosebumps. Little AI agents facing off in a game of hide and seek start evolving with seriously clever strategies. According to the author's bio (dynamic, time-aware ML systems, etc.) that sort of thing should be right up their ally!

Instead we get some sort of selective self-promotion hit piece - highlighting anecdotal failures while claiming some better AI based robotics startup is coming soon(tm).

jefbon Show HN: This Question Does Not Exist

I think we've all been here before:

"i've been asked to use Json to call a webservice. I don't modify a JSON object at all. However, when calling JSON returned by the Json object, it fails because the object life isn't array!"

https://stackroboflow.com/#!/question/24101

jefbon Could 'Oumuamua be an icy fractal aggregate ejected from a protoplanetary disk?

As am I. The paper dedicates one sentence to that question:

"... another aspect that needs to be studied is whether its extremely low density could be maintained while in the parent system, during its long interstellar journey, and when entering the solar system."

Without analyzing the structural integrity of such a fluff ball it's tough to give any more or less merit to this concept than the others.

jefbon Snapchat Data Lorenz

These are interesting, but many are tough to really grok without being normalized by DAU's

jefbon $4k Renault compared to Tesla Model 3

What Is Disruption, Anyway? ... In India, where the average wage remains a fraction of those in the first world, it starts with an affordable car that isn’t a complete piece of junk.

5 Paragraphs later:

It would be the same price as the sector-leading Maruti Suzuki, but with more space. It would include a 7” infotainment system with a touchscreen. It would have real ground clearance. It would resemble a smaller version of Renault’s wildly popular Duster SUV.

New sexy features don't make something disruptive. Sure, it may pan out to be a popular vehicle, but disruptive? because it has infotainment?... spare us.

jefbon Serial podcast returns as Bowe Bergdahl talks US military 'desertion'

I love it when journalism forces the consideration of both sides by the reader/listener. By the end, opinions will still be had, but they will be defensible.

There was a great episode of Radiolab recently called "The Rhino Hunter" that accomplished this wonderfully.

It's still early, but that seems to be the direction this season is going. At the very least, those on either side will be more informed.

jefbon An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia (2013)

My grad school stipend was ~$500 every two weeks pre-tax. I worked like crazy. The football coach made ~250k. I now make over 5 times that.. after taxes.

When I left grad school I found many of it's problems present in the corporate world; except that now, compensation is commiserate with responsibility.

jefbon The Python Road Not Taken

Number one reason why I haven't switched yet?... print. Admittedly is is the dumbest possible reason, it's irrational; I would never admit it in a face-to-face conversation; I would deflect to "something something third-party library...", but deep-down inside, if I'm really honest with myself, it's print. I want asyncio, I want better unicode support, but all I think about are SyntaxError's in what I __strongly__ consider to be valid python.

My stubbornness is rooted in the simplicity of print. It is so simple and stupid, why change it? Never has a production app relied heavily on print, it's just a dumb way to check shit while developing. I mean sweet jesus if it ain't broke right? I know I'm wrong in thinking this kind of thing happened everywhere in the 2->3 increment, but as I said earlier, I'm under no illusion of rationality. Python 3 broke hello world, and that just skeeves me out.

Eventually I'll write new stuff in 3, probably sooner rather than later especially with asyncio et all, but for now I'll stick with 2.

jefbon Web Scraping Indeed for Key Data Science Job Skills

    for script in soup_obj(["script", "style"]):
            script.extract() # Only need these two elements from the BS4 object

That comment is a bit misleading. soup.extract() will remove those tags from the tree, 'script' and 'style' are the two tags you __don't__ need.

http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/bs4/doc/#extrac...