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joeyespo

26,686 karma · joined December 28, 2010

Passionate developer with a splash of art.

    @joeyespo
     joeyespo.com
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joeyespo··on Google is shutting down paid Chrome extensions
Hacker News comments from the source story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24548876
joeyespo··on Deepfakes Are Going to Wreak Havoc on Society. We Are Not Prepared
Could be since videos were always an option before.

Now there's not much to fall back on if videos become too difficult to distinguish what's real or not. Is there anything beyond video that we can trust when looking for information?

joeyespo··on Show HN: Fully-automatic image background removal tool
Makes sense!

One idea for the "enter a URL" path. If you save the image URL for a longer time period, you could give the viewer the option to re-run that URL and perhaps save it to that location for another hour.

Or show a message like what Flask's logo does when you right-click it the first time [0]. e.g. "Note: Direct linking will not work. This image will disappear from our servers in an hour." (Possibly with "Click here to post to Twitter instead," which can help "persist" an image while spreading the site a bit further in the process.)

[0]: http://flask.pocoo.org/

joeyespo··on A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley
As a father of two toddlers, absolutely this.

TV, movies, and games are forms of entertainment. Advertising is a form of manipulation.

Sure, the lines can be blurred, so we do our best to filter out the bad intentions.

Modern advertising seems to become more effective as well. I never anticipated a defense of ads, but I've actually been criticized by visiting relatives for keeping commercials out of reach of our family. We're "out of the loop" now, unable to relate to a joke or situation delivered by commercial. And around holidays and birthdays, we get asked "How do your kids even know what they want without commercials?"

joeyespo··on Show HN: A game that pits your sanity against JavaScript's == operator
Nice! Really enjoyed the Minesweeper feel to it :-)
joeyespo··on Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?
There's an excellent YouTube channel called The Bible Project that breaks down each book in the Bible, explores recurring themes, and explains the original meaning of certain translated words. Their Ecclesiastes videos is one of my favorites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeUiuSK81-0

Here's another from them that answers "what exactly _is_ the Bible?" for anyone curious https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_CGP-12AE0

joeyespo··on Designing very large JavaScript applications
This way of thinking was my main motivation behind Grip [0]. Use Readme-driven development and "play" with the API--whether it's in the form of a CLI, a library, or web API-- through usage examples.

I've found this to be a wonderful way to get into the heads of dev users before you approach them directly.

[0]: https://github.com/joeyespo/grip

joeyespo··on Why It’s So Hard to Actually Work in Shared Offices
In comic form: http://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt-... ("This Is Why You Shouldn't Interrupt a Programmer")
joeyespo··on Introducing the Graphcool Framework
I don't have the experience to dispute this, but the top comment on Hacker News a while back suggests the article is mostly fear/uncertainty/doubt. The author doesn't seem back up any of their claims with enough technical detail.

Go ahead and read and decide for yourself though: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13582757

joeyespo··on Show HN: GitHub Version Tags – Chrome extension to show a repo's current version
So I occasionally find myself looking up a dependency's version after visiting its GitHub page. I built this to help instead of clicking and searching while juggling other thoughts. (At least until GitHub does this kind of thing natively. I'd be happy to have this become redundant.)
joeyespo··on Is the keyboard faster than the mouse?
Agreed.

Been using My Style [1] for readability on his site. Even this small tweak helped:

    body {
      max-width: 768px;
      margin: 32px auto;
      font-family: Helvetica;
      font-size: 20px;
    }
[1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/my-style/ljdhjpmbn...
joeyespo··on Why I'm Frequently Absent from Open Source
It's a shame opening an issue can so easily be used as a frustration outlet, yet there's no equivalent feature to show that you love a project without burdening a maintainer with an issue.

I personally enjoy being on both the sending and receiving end of message of thanks.

Projects like this recognize this and can perhaps help break that silence of the majority https://github.com/kennethreitz/saythanks.io

joeyespo··on Robots Aren’t Killing the American Dream
> We're nowhere close to 100% automation

It doesn't have to be 100% for it to affect people depending on this industry.

> doesn't mean replacing every single job that went overseas

Sure. But again, assuming there will be enough manufacturing jobs that do return, this is still a _short-term_ solution. You're fooling yourself, and a lot of hard-working people, if you believe these jobs will stick around another 10 years.

Let me take a step back for a moment. If doing this eases the daily struggle for real people nation-wide, that's convincing. But let's not then sweep the real discussions around automation under the rug. Let's address this now before the jobs inevitably dissolve again.

joeyespo··on Robots Aren’t Killing the American Dream
> This is partly why I don't understand the left's animosity towards Trump's economic plan - he intends to bring jobs back to the US by hobbling corporations that have been exploiting poorer countries for profit

Because it won't work. Tell a company to pay higher wages for the same positions by bringing them home, and that'll push them toward automation even faster.

These jobs may return for a short while. But that only brings false hope. And then we're right back to where we are today, hurting even more people in the process. It's extremely short-sighted.

Here's just one article on the matter https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602869/manufacturing-jobs...

Also note that Foxconn has already begun automating their plants. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966 So it's already a demonstratably viable option for these companies.

What we really need is to bring _automation_ home and have some serious discussions around solutions for these real struggling people instead of spouting the hand-wavy "bringing jobs back to the US" rhetoric.

joeyespo··on If labor is being replaced by capital, then the revenue should come mostly from…
> But most Americans are not that self-motivated

Most Americans don't really have a choice. There's just not enough time and energy for self-direction after a 40+ hour work week.

The evidence is in age (and those who do have the extra time). Children are incredibly curious and self-motivated. Teenagers are too, if you give them the opportunity and guidance. If you're lucky enough to go to college, you have a pocket of time to try things and tinker (in addition to the easier-to-find socializing aspect) before the realization of how much debt hits you. People in their 20s-60s aren't self-motivated because work occupies most of their time. Not the other way around.

Also, for being in a field that relies on creativity and changing people's perspective and habits, saying that it's a non-starter because people are cynical and won't change is not being very creative.

joeyespo··on Be careful about what you dislike
http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/07/strong_opinio...
joeyespo··on Music Theory: An Education from First Principles
Have any examples you could link to? I'm very curious to hear what that sounds like.
joeyespo··on President Obama schools SV CEOs on why government is not like business
> But there’s lots of collateral damage inherent in the free market — in “blowing up the system,” as Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like to say. Such explosions are great for the bomb manufacturers, but not so much for innocent bystanders.

This seems to be the overlooked point here. In business, it can be profitable to disrupt and go after sweeping changes. In government, you can hurt real people in large numbers by doing so.

Also, the article isn't implying that companies can't or won't do good. Companies can certainly work well across income ranges. The point is, that's still a different goal than working well across all income ranges.

joeyespo··on Notes on concurrency bugs
I've been using My Style [1] for blogs like this. On Dan's, I added the following tweak:

    body { max-width: 768px; margin: 32px auto; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 20px; }
It really helps my focus on long articles that are otherwise hard on the eyes. I know there's Readability and all, but this extension works without any additional steps once set up.

[1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/my-style/ljdhjpmbn...

joeyespo··on Chrome removes Backspace to go back
This is true in general. Although "decrease complexity" shouldn't exactly trump "build the right thing."

In this case, the right thing really is contextual, so a configuration or extant setting / default is worth the cost in complexity.

The quote "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" comes to mind here.

joeyespo··on A Basic Income Is Smarter Than a Minimum Wage
Gig work doesn't go away with BI.

> One of the problems with basic income is that decouples work from income entirely

It does, but not entirely. You can still work for extra income. It only breaks the dependency in the other direction. And that's its strength.

The gig economy, while incredible and empowering, is also unstable and largely out of your control. You can have an influx of work at one moment, and near zero another. BI smooths this over by allowing you to survive during the dips. It also reduces the toxic stress contractors can experience even during a wave of work. When the gigs run out (and therefore, the income is less under BI--but not zero!), it gives you time to seek out new work without panicking.

joeyespo··on Changes to Npm's unpublish policy
> It's a far better approach than using shasums for package integrity though.

The point of that article is that it isn't. It only adds integrity if you trust the signer. From the article:

> When attempting to verify a signed file you check the signature against a public key. If the signature matches that public key then everything is kosher. The question then becomes which public key, and therein lies the rub. If you do not have a well defined model of trust then all you’ve done is thrown cryptography at a problem in order to give the people involved the ability to say that their system has signature verification.

> It's not NPMs job/obligation to provide the javascript world with never ending storage, hosting, and bandwidth.

That's true, and a good point that we shouldn't expect it to be this way in all circumstances. On the other hand, allowing people to rip out packages without warning makes for a much worse npm experience. Expecting that all JS developers set up a local proxy for all projects, particularly in a non-professional setting, is also unrealistic. npm is indeed improving the situation here (even if they're not solving all possible situations).

Do you think if would help if npm automatically banked packages locally? It's not quite a company-wide proxy, but it could prevent this from failing on your local machine without too much setup.

joeyespo··on Changes to Npm's unpublish policy
GPG isn't the holy grail. See https://caremad.io/2013/07/packaging-signing-not-holy-grail/

Proxying via a local dependency is a good practice, but that can be set up independently of npm.

joeyespo··on Changes to Npm's unpublish policy
It appears that by publishing, you accept their terms in allowing them to distribute the package [1]. They also say they won't run the code directly (although they may analyze it), which might sidestep certain license issues. My guess is that it's no different than posting it on your own website and having the Internet Archive back it up.

(IANAL. Just doing my best to interpret their policy.)

[1]: https://github.com/npm/policies/pull/43/files

joeyespo··on Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments
> are reluctant to -1 as it signifies conflict

That's because people don't tend to write "-1", but rather disagree with a comment explaining why. GitHub is full of disagreement. We'd be in a much worse place if that was all expressed through downvotes instead of comments (unless of course, an issue is explicitly opting in to a vote).

> people will +1 something that they 90% disagree with because of who's saying it, don't kid yourself otherwise.

Ok yeah, you're right about the politics. Bad example. But in open source, I've seen much more comment-based pushback regardless of author.

joeyespo··on Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments
FWIW unlike HN, downvoting has no negative consequences to the comment on GitHub. It's useful on HN to effectively remove the off-topic and deeply non-constructive comments. But on GitHub, it serves no such function. We're going to end up with the many abuses of -1's and none of the benefits.

As for "I don’t think it’s 100% clear-cut that you should never ever implement downvotes," perhaps. There's still probably better ways to flag inappropriate comments though. Like a flag button. Downvotes are far too general and ambiguous in comparison.

joeyespo··on Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments
Not every issue needs an up/down vote. But with the addition of -1, all issues and _all comments_ on those feature requests now have one. Which takes us back to the negative consequences outlined in this thread.
joeyespo··on Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments
The difference is when you +1, you're publically expressing agreement with what they wrote. If someone you like writes something you don't agree with, you wouldn't +1 them. If you're having a good day, you still wouldn't blindly dish out +1's because if you +1 a controversial comment, it could hurt your reputation.

Negation is different because it's entirely ambiguous. You can dish them out freely and retroactively rationalize your intention. -1's are way more susceptible to knee-jerk emotional reactions than +1's.

A relevant example. Think of the political candidate you like the most. If someone you really like asks you to +1 a persuasive argument about their competitor, would you? On the other hand, if they asked you to -1 someone, you probably would. Even if you knew very little about them.

joeyespo··on Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments
> People who don't agree with something should have a way of expressing their views

What about a comment? Once someone elaborates why they disagree, others can trivially +1 it to show support of a specific disagreement.

On the other hand, you can disagree with both the original comment and someone's disagreement, prompting an additional "disagreement" reply.

Note that -1's don't carry as much information as you'd think. It could mean any one of these:

- Someone disagrees with you

- Someone doesn't like you

- Someone is angry or having a bad day

- Someone is retaliating or holding a grudge

Without any rationale, there's absolutely no way to tell the difference between a useful disagreement and juvenile aggression.

joeyespo··on Add Reactions to Pull Requests, Issues, and Comments
Sounds like a pre-optimization. You can get the same level of information with two comments and vote exclusively with +1's, but without the general negative aspects of what's mentioned above.
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