HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

korkoros

74 karma · joined July 29, 2023

submissionscomments
korkoros··on Confidence Scores for Exam Questions
Moodle has had certainty based marking for at least 15 years.

https://docs.moodle.org/502/en/Using_certainty-based_marking

korkoros··on GeoJSON
About 25% of ZIP codes don't have a corresponding Census Bureau ZCTA, for example 10118. Do you end up needing special handling for those cases? Or has it not yet come up in practice?
korkoros··on Just Put It on a Map
The overall claim is true - yes put it on a map.

But I'm not a fan of these particular maps because the use of 3d makes them harder to read. The isometric view and rotation away from north at the top break conventions that people use to orient themselves in the map and connect it to their lived experiences on the ground. I'm reasonably familiar with NYC geography, and I could not immediately recognize the landscape I was looking at in these maps. Ironically, it was only because I already knew the answer to the question that I could do so: "oh that huge green spike must be Manhattan".

I think a 2d choropleth map with a diverging color scale centered on the mean value would work better.

korkoros··on America's Dirtiest Carbon Polluters, Mapped to Ridiculous Precision
At 1km resolution, this is largely just a map of US urbanized areas. The spatial variation isn't that interesting. The temporal variation and the absolute values per spatial unit are the greater value of this project.
korkoros··on Geoutil.com – Measure distances, areas, and convert geo data in the browser
I think adding something like (or awareness of datum transformations generally) would make the tool harder to use for its intended audience. If you need the level of precision where tectonic plate movement matters, then you need professional level tools.
korkoros··on CBP Enforces Binary Sex Codes and Enhanced US Passport Validation in APIs
This change is in direct contradiction to the guidance provided by the US State Department:

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/passpor...

korkoros··on Cars' Forward Blind Zones Are Worse Now Than 25 Years Ago
What are the masculine-coded virtues?

Strength. A man's vehicle should both demonstrate and develop his physical prowess.

Protection. A man's vehicle should make others safer, even if it puts himself at greater risk.

Providing. A man should buy the cheapest vehicle that serves his needs, the better to provide for his family.

A cargo bike is the manliest vehicle you can use.

korkoros··on DuckDB is probably the most important geospatial software of the last decade
My experience has been that data generalists should stay away from geospatial analysis precisely because they lack a full appreciation of the importance of spatial references. I've seen people fail at this task in so many ways. From "I don't need a library to reproject, I'll just use a haversine function" to "I'll just do a spatial join of these address points in WGS84 to these parcels in NAD27" to "these North Korean missiles aren't a threat because according to this map using a Mercator projection, we are out of range."

DuckDB is great, but the fact that it makes it easier for data generalists to make mistakes with geospatial data is mark against it, not in its favor.

korkoros··on H3: For indexing geographies into a hexagonal grid, by Uber
Squares have a contiguity problem: does a square in a grid have 4 neighbors (rook contiguity) or 8 (queen contiguity)? Hexagons do not have this problem. All neighbors of a hexagon share a full edge, not just a vertex. All neighbors of a hex also have their centers equidistant from that hex. A massive number of spatial problems turn on neighborhood definitions, and hexes are almost always a better representation of reality than squares.
korkoros··on Leaked Google pay data shows how much employees report making
I work for a federal defense contractor that is required to prove in Department of Labor audits that pay is not discriminatory. The possibility of losing those federal contracts is an existential threat to the company. Definitely not "niche cherry picked reporting stats that few people look at."

The significant restructuring (affected several hundred people) that you describe did in fact occur.

korkoros··on Leaked Google pay data shows how much employees report making
Considering that the company I work for tried to hide their gender pay discrimination by "releveling" all the women who were getting systematically underpaid, you should in fact report these data without disaggregation.

"Those people make less because they are all lower level" is not a mitigating factor for pay discrimination.