Hacker News Reader

junkscience2017on Go best practices, six years in (2016)

I feel like go-kit is quite antithetical to the Go mindset...it presents a lossy abstraction as a means of future-proofing against eventualities that will almost certainly never be encountered

to be honest it strikes me as the sort of library that excites intermediate developers who tend to over-architect

junkscience2017on AI Will Not Be Taking Away Code Jobs Anytime Soon

No, but combine cloud APIs, AI, and market consolidation and you will indeed see a reduction in the demand for code. I write much less code than I did ten years ago. I spend more time integrating others' code now than I do writing my own.

In ten years most industrial coders will probably be down to a hundred or so lines of new production code a year...it will be the DATA arcitects who are calling the architecture shots as it becomes clear that data architecture trmps code architecture

junkscience2017on Millennials Strike Back: An Esoteric Reading of the Last Jedi

the movie sucked but at least this satire review was funny

junkscience2017on Shopping for a Home in the Bay Area? Head to the Mall

exactly. it is a mall, not a town

do you really want to live in a mall?

outside of santana row is winchester blvd and steven's creek blvd...aka nothing

junkscience2017on As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting

The UC system was created to serve residents of the State. These are publicly funded institutions. They are here to serve the taxpaying public. Private schools exist to serve aspirational foreign students.

If residents feel the system does not serve them, they will defund it, and everyone will be worse off. We have these things called Propositions, and they tend to elicit emotional responses. Most California residents are probably beginning to have a negative impression of UC...most of the news from UC is graft, corruption, etc

junkscience2017on As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting

In 1977, education was 27% of the California State budget. In 2008, education was 37% of the California State budget, it is now 42%. And the absolute size of the budget itself is rising. So in fact funding is increasing as a percentage of the budget and in absolute scales.

The only real recent drop was 2007-2008. There is plenty of money available to run UC prudently as a resource for residents...indeed, more than ever before.

Downvote all you want, these are UCs own numbers so they are true regardless of your opinion or angst.

junkscience2017on As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting

No, foreign students are keeping UC corrupt. UC has been plagued by scandal after scandal, horrendous waste, graft, patronage...etc etc

The UC system needs more oversight, not more funny money. Cal had enough money to build a gorgeous football stadium. They have enough money to fund the Chancellor's alleged slush fund.

California residents have an extremely high tax burden. They are doing their part. UC needs to be cleaned up, starting with a renewed focus on their core mission. None of the necessary reforms will happen while California has one-party rule.

junkscience2017on As Flow of Foreign Students Wanes, U.S. Universities Feel the Sting

Schools like Cal are still offering too many slots to foreign students despite being chartered to serve the families of taxpayers who provide their funding.

The same issue will eventually plague Canadian schools...foreign students will simply pay more directly for tuition even though taxpayers are still the core source of funds.

For private universities, no one should care..they should select students from wherever they like. But State schools should exist to serve their residents.

junkscience2017on Infographic: The Everything Bubble Is Ready to Pop

but in the first .com bubble, companies lived and died only on their stock activity. these days, the winners have enough cash piled up that a recession would actually be welcome; it would allow them to buy companies and employees on the cheap, and many of their flimsy competitors would fold.

if you think Apple, Google and Facebook dominate now, wait until the next recession. can your company laugh off losing half it's market cap temporarily? they can

junkscience2017on San Francisco’s Skyline, Now Inescapably Transformed by Tech

"If only there were some sort of mechanism for it to skim off of real estate value and use the money for public goods. We could call it... property taxes."

what schools? land has to be set aside for schools. no developer makes this sacrifice anymore. it doesn't matter if revenue is generated if there is NO SCHOOL because no one would build one. and yes this is becoming a problem in the Bay Area.

"Road capacity is an interesting one, because people who live in dense walkable environments close to their offices need less transportation"

maybe like 0.1% of people in SF are candidates for walking to work, you can't be serious

junkscience2017on The Benefits of Economic Expansions Are Increasingly Going to the Richest

that includes the US, where taxation still is mostly borne by the rich

junkscience2017on The Benefits of Economic Expansions Are Increasingly Going to the Richest

yet we often celebrate the very wealthy buying up strategic properties and setting them aside as nature preserves

just recently a chunk of California coast was preserved in such a way by the founders of map company Esri.

we also set aside vast acreage as monuments. this land is also permanently "off the market"

junkscience2017on San Francisco’s Skyline, Now Inescapably Transformed by Tech

but NIMBYs still have not had their core claim dismissed: that new residential capacity is not being augmented with better transportation infrastructure or even schools. most NIMBYs gave up on neighborhood parks, they seem just impossible now. amusingly, even retail is being shunned (residential is build, sell and move on, which is why places like Silver Creek in San Jose only have one tiny pathetic market for 5k homes). most cities now have to force retail components on to developers

if you live in the US, chances are you attended a public school built by a developer in exchange for development rights, and the school was accessible by a road also built by the developer. the park was set aside as such and not filled with homes; instead the developer paid to put in a swingset and a tennis court

now developers refuse to augment transportation infrastructure or build schools (and it is illegal to decline a development due to predicted pressure on local school), and NIMBYs want to know why. all they get in response are downvotes on message boards or personal attacks

thousands new rental units are going up along Lawrence Expressway in Santa Clara...but no new road capacity and no new schools, and no parks or open space at all. what kind of a community would you like to live in? in a few years the same urban professionals who are the core of the YIMBYs will be freaking out about no schools or parks, because they are going to want them.

junkscience2017on Most Ordinary Americans in 2016 Are Richer Than Was John D. Rockefeller in 1916

sounds like you are needlessly wound-up about this. it is merely a thought-experiment detailing some amusing anecdotes regarding the progress of society. your idea that this is some rebuttal to undermine the issue of inequality seems to be your strawman...if you look at it from another perspective, much of the progress addressed in the article has resulted from the democratization of economic growth

junkscience2017on People Walked Differently in Medieval Times

somewhere out there, one brave last LifeHacker is combining this with the Power Pose just because

junkscience2017on Things I have learnt as the software engineering lead of a multinational

Patton's strategy was borrowed from his inspiration...Sherman. The goal was to make war intensely in order to end it quickly and let his soldiers return to their lives. Software development is not war.

junkscience2017on Things I have learnt as the software engineering lead of a multinational

"18. Don’t shy away from leading without doing, it is unavoidable, so just do it. Then do some work to stay pertinent.

19. If you are not able to hire and fire people, leave. Or stay for the retirement fund if you can stomach it."

the way the author discusses people and pretty much everything in the "Yourself" category makes me think this unnamed multinational is a sweatshop overseas. I've worked (temporarily) with people who try to bring this thinking to Silicon Valley

junkscience2017on Things I have learnt as the software engineering lead of a multinational

You have to be careful. I am currently in an org that has embraced this philosophy. Instead of making the survivors feel valued, it has motivated most of them to move into more stable environments. These employees have dependents and don't like the idea of having their health insurance in play on a daily basis.

People read Glassdoor. If your company earns a rep for rapidly and casually dismissing people, you will see good resumes dry up. In our case, the quality of candidates has nosedived. It's not clear why a strong candidate would join a company that opts to fire people so casually.

junkscience2017on Firefighter Math

It would seem that assisting at auto accident scenes now constitute 95% of actual calls firefighters make (i.e. discounting false-alarm calls)...which makes me wonder why there isn't an effort to situate fire stations right on major highways.

Where I live in California there has been only one house fire in our town in years, but the fire department is on the highway responding to an accident at least once a week.

junkscience2017on The great error: the Bolsheviks were not a party but an apocalyptic sect

Much of this is easily debunked in accessible books and even YouTube videos. The original Bolsheviks had indeed read their Marx. They knew that a revolution needed to happen not in Russia (which everyone knew was a pre-industrial state), but in industrialized Germany and potentially Britain. Merely decimating Russian society was never the end goal of the Bolsheviks.

Russia was considered by Lenin to be a staging ground for the more meaningful revolutions to follow. It wasn't until Stalin emerged as the Soviet leader that this strategy was abandoned in favor of "socialism in one country", where the exploitation of pre-industrial Russia was deemed good enough.

I doubt anyone would even describe Stalin's reign in religious terms (although his upbringing was deeply religious)...but just another manifestation of history's most reliable anti-pattern: the folly of investing total power in one person.

junkscience2017on Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since the 1950s

I'm frankly surprised the situation in SF has not garnered more attention. At Ed Lee's funeral, it was endless adulation. You wouldn't know what the city had become. We've gone well beyond trash-chic...SF has become downright dangerous and teetering on something far worse.

I don't go to SF unless I have to now. I have no idea why rich people are still flocking to SF. It is only a matter of time before the homeless set up at Broadway and Broderick.

Last time I was there I saw a nice woman driving in a top-line Range Rover with her cute blonde kids in the back. They stopped at an intersection near the Bay Bridge. The underpass was jammed with tents and all manner of desperate people. Some young guy from the camp made eye contact with them and stared them down from a distance...they were oblivious. These people think the invisible wall will hold. I don't want to be in SF the day it breaks down, and I am convinced it will.

The city government isn't liberal enough to raise a local tax to build a solution, but also not conservative enough to take a hard line. They're just letting it fester and it will become worse and worse until someone decides to break through the invisible line separating the tent cities from the Pac Heights mansions.

junkscience2017on Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since the 1950s

most cities are reporting this trend

junkscience2017on Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since the 1950s

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Detroit

"Detroit has the second highest murder rate in the United States"

violent crime is down everywhere in the US, so it is still useful to see the relative ranking to other cities

https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...

junkscience2017on Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since the 1950s

The poor have been priced out. Go to big cities that still have a large segment of objectively poor people and you will see the attendant crime.

junkscience2017on Google retires the Pixel C tablet as it shifts focus to the Pixelbook

my Nexus 9 has worked well for years and of all of the Nexus products I have purchased (4,5,9,10,5x), it has been the most reliable over time. I don't see anything to replace it with.

junkscience2017on Google retires the Pixel C tablet as it shifts focus to the Pixelbook

the Pixelbook will fail because it is too expensive. I love Chromebooks and think they make sense in a lot of cases...but at a $350 price point.

I still use my Nexus 9 (typing this on it)...and skipped the Pixel C due to costs and bad reviews

Google's entire "upscale" Pixel effort seems doomed. The Nexus effort was mostly perfect: decent hardware at attractive prices and stock software with reasonable updates.

Apple commands a premium in part due to Apple Stores being plentiful. When my son cracks his iPhone screen, he walks to the Apple Store and he has a replacement screen in about an hour. What can Google offer? Nothing similar.

junkscience2017on The lucrative business of America’s opioid crisis

you may be recalling a Hacker News from another era...at this point it is mostly aging software developers bemoaning change and harumphing most everything.

there might be a forum for legitimate hackers who are genuinely stymied by government regulation, but HN isn't it, at least not anymore

YC itself isn't much of a change agent anymore either, it has devolved into a private club for people who won in Silicon Valley

junkscience2017on Big Tech Is Going After Health Care

so ELI5 why we shouldn't just get rid of HIPAA? from the way people talk, all HIPAA does is guarantee that things will always be awful(?) how does HIPAA help if it just keeps us in the past?

junkscience2017on Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal

Yet Bombardier itself is subsidized to the point where many have suggested it would be easier to just nationalize it...yet no one is critiquing that arrangement

junkscience2017on Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal

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