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jhaglund

181 karma · joined September 28, 2009

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jhaglund··on What Our Digital Footprint Says About Us
I'm not conservative, 26, or female.

It also says I'm smarter than just 49% of the population, while IQ tests say at least 80%. Maybe I'm just good at taking tests and Facebook is the real me?

jhaglund··on ‘Sea Slaves’: The human misery that feeds pets and livestock
Except that's not really true.

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-05-30/new-research...

http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/01/do-microloans-really-...

jhaglund··on Solving the Traveling Tesla Salesman Problem: Part 2
> Also interesting is the Marathon Supercharger in the Florida Keys: it clearly makes a big difference in the route whether you can fly over water or not :)

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Highway

Which replaced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Railroad

jhaglund··on Lincoln Penny on the Curiosity Rover
Considering that a penny in 1909 had the buying power of about $0.25 today, I wish they would have attached a quarter. (death to pennies!)
jhaglund··on Why we should give free money to everyone
Paragraph 1 states 46.2 million people lived below the official poverty level, and 10.4 million of those were working, so you conclude that the remaining "choose not to work". But the next line states that that first number includes children (at least 14 million http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_912.html) and adults (including those unable to work for legitimate reasons).

Your other link doesn't show its math either. I'm feeling trolled.

jhaglund··on Why we should give free money to everyone
It is absurd to say that because someone augments their benefits with $300 a month in child care, their problems are over.

Can you point to where in that PDF you got that 80% number? Like, if you're going to cite a link, could you use a number I can ctrl+f? instead of "about 80%"? Because I suspect this number includes children and people who may be better off not working due to medical or other problems.

jhaglund··on Why we should give free money to everyone
What about this labor drop? http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CIVPART?rid=50&s...
jhaglund··on Why we should give free money to everyone
I think you should reconsider the assertion that poor in the US usually don't work. Minimum wage jobs leave you just above the poverty level if you're single, below if you are supporting someone. Considering cash based, under the table, transient work that poor people accept is under reported (for fear of loosing benefits which fall off steeply as a recipient's income increases) I think even finding statistics on this would be difficult.

There are sociopaths on welfare (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2013... ) as surely as there are sociopaths in power. But what this article is saying is most people who need assistance are going to do good things with the assistance.

jhaglund··on Why we should give free money to everyone
If we can have an increasing GDP while most of America experiences stagnation (as with the recent recovery) who's to say we can't have decreasing GDP coupled with improving quality of life? (at least for a short period) As you point out, machines are doing far more of the work that workers once did.

Another policy of FDR's New Deal was the creation of the 8 hour day (many people still worked 12-14 hour days until then: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_Day#United_States). Perhaps reduced hours allowed more laborers to move into the workforce, and could be a more competitive and cheap way of supporting a broad middle class.

jhaglund··on Why we should give free money to everyone
Can't tell if sarcasm, considering that Thatcher's move was to privatise, until she ran out of public assets.

This pithy quote is also wrong because it assumes the economy is a zero sum game and misses the point that this article is trying to make -- that giving away money would be cheaper and have better results than the current system of welfare.

jhaglund··on Learn to code like it's 1996
California has cheap community colleges. It's $99 per credit (a class is 3 or more credits) where I grew up, plus books. http://www.ccac.edu/default.aspx?id=137210

$400 for a life skill might sound like a great deal, but it can be hard to afford.

jhaglund··on Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult
Do we call money made from investments or inheritance Welfare? In a post agrarian society, work and income are not related.
jhaglund··on Hyperloop Alpha [pdf]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Railroad

In 1905, they built 128 miles of railroad connecting the Florida keys. Since then, engineering has advanced significantly. Overland is still easier than overseas.

jhaglund··on Snowden is Heading for Iceland
give it an http, not https url and you won't get error messages. but the translation is borked.
jhaglund··on Fun with JavaScript Arrays
Assignment within the brackets, that kinda surprised me

  > a = []
  > a[a[typeof a]='huh', void a] = 'puh'

  > console.log(a)
  [object: "huh", undefined: "puh"]
huh... you can do this too

  > a = []
  > a[a[a[typeof a]='huh'] = 'puh'] = 'woh'
  > console.log(a)
  [object: "huh", huh: "puh", puh: "woh"]
jhaglund··on Shia LaBeouf: phone surveillance whistleblower?
If Shia handed Jay Top Secret documents and refused to give his source up, you think he'd be free? I suspect anyone with the power to go after him, who noticed his comment, knew about the streisand effect, and bought 5 more years of secrecy rather than go after this "leak".
jhaglund··on Limiting Antibiotics in Animals
If you're going to start with a comment about FUD, could you enlighten us with the rest of the comment instead of rhetorical questions?

Cattle raised on corn (aka, most cattle raised for human consumption) require continuous use of antibiotics in their feed to prevent rumen diseases. The rumen was "designed" to digest grass and cellulose, not corn. But we feed cows corn because it's cheaper than grazing, and the cows are meaty enough for slaughter after just 18 months.

That link you provided is very feel-good-family, but can you provide some science?

jhaglund··on Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights?
Your use of TM™ indicates to me that you are arrogant and cynical. You personally can't make the world better (see: dictator) and that really hurts an ego.

You would rather see yourself as a helpless pesant being oppressed than admit you're closer in status to the bourgeoisie.

You sound like my old friend Steve. So let me say this: don't do anything stupid, you will get caught. I think he's out of prision now but I don't talk to him anymore.

jhaglund··on Why Should I Care That No One’s Reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights?
Ya know, I'm all for "innocent until proven guilty" but blury pictures of them dropping a bag, a witness description, a car chase where they threw bombs out the window, a shootout where one brother got hit with shrapnel of his own pressure cooker bomb, etc.

Let justice do its blind thing but it's OK for us to state the obvious. They did it.

jhaglund··on Die Git Die
Well, go right ahead and use cp and mv for your source control!

No one (except maybe linus) ever said git is easy. But it is flexible and powerful.

Anyway, this whole thing comes down to the user ignoring clear warnings. It seems clear to me that using "force" can break things.

jhaglund··on Die Git Die
Git doesn't have much of a user interface because it's target is developers who want to use the command line. Git is confusing until it's not, and then it's awesome.

It's kinda like you're using wget to surf the web, and complaining that it doesn't have a GUI.

http://git-scm.com/downloads/guis

jhaglund··on Poll: What was your financial situation when you started your startup?
You don't get unemployment if you voluntarily leave your job. edit: or a contractor.
jhaglund··on Reinventing the Airline Industry
A HUGE reason for that instability is most of your plane ticket pays for fuel. some airlines buy futures, some just stockpile fuel when it's cheap.

My father worked in fuel procurement for a few airlines. He hated fuel price instability as much as you hate air fare instability.

jhaglund··on JCircle.js jQuery plugin for circular interactions
donuts.css reminded me of this plugin i wrote
jhaglund··on Aaron Swartz Was Targeted by Feds Over His Activism
Except A without B isn't a felony worthy of federal charges.

Our legal system's standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt" not what a child would infer from the evidence. The fact that Aaron had not committed B despite having the time and ability to should have left the prosecutor with a reasonable doubt that such a violation was imminent.

jhaglund··on The Chromebook Pixel
And none of those devices do touch.
jhaglund··on Prison and the Poverty Trap
> Any job an illegal immigrant can get, a felon can as well.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is for undocumented workers? There is no upward mobility in their jobs. They either get documented, get exploited, or go home. Why should a person who served their 20 years again be pushed to a level where they are exploited, (unpaid wages, unsafe work environments) as undocumented workers often are? This will perpetuate more societal problems than assisting individuals with their recovery.

jhaglund··on Prison and the Poverty Trap
1. Saying that the rest of us are law abiding is an exaggeration.

2. http://www.drugpolicy.org/drug-facts/cocaine-and-crack-facts

jhaglund··on Federal Reserve confirms hackers breached site
I think it's more like the bank manager kept installing low-security locks (edit: because their supplier gave a wowie presentation) when the locksmith advised upgrades. I'm neither a bank manager nor in government but I've worked on projects with the sort of terrible management decisions that could lead to this outcome.
jhaglund··on [dead]
IIRC, early touch screens were resistive, rather than capacitive, which didn't support multi-touch. without multitouch, no pinch. the interface has existed in movies for a long time and it just took bringing down the cost of capacitive touch screens. If Apple chooses, their size and market following allow them to bring tech to the consumer faster. That's why they got pinch to zoom first, not because of clever innovation.
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