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lammalamma25

100 karma · joined July 19, 2018

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lammalamma25··on You can't git clone a team
Curious if there is a way to dip your toe into this kind of thing without dedicating years of learning. Maybe a home lab? I've always been interested in this because it seems hard/interesting, and enjoyed learning about it in school. Wondering how much time you'd have to invest to see if you like it. I assume there is a healthy amount of "this is hard/not fun" along the way before you find out.
lammalamma25··on Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees
This matches my experience. The company I’m at spent money on decent developers to get a project stood up and running, but will only hire cheap remote developers for the crud enhancement work that’s needed now. It makes sense until something important breaks or some thing new needs to be stood up. I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

I sort of see a parallel in the job market although it might be a stretch. Most of the work is easy to outsource/go cheap on, but a small core is incredibly important to get right. It’s not obvious when a job posting is looking for one or the other.

lammalamma25··on China allows couples to have three children
Every story about China should include a note that the government decides how many children its citizens are allowed to have. We've grown numb to how terrible this is.
lammalamma25··on Anatomy of a Bubble – Tesla and Bitcoin
Not sure this article was more than a journal entry for the guy who wrote it, but I will chime in.

Given any anecdote about the economy going down and stock market going up, it is worth noting what is going on with the money supply. There is a huge amount of liquidity being pushed into the USD supply by the fed and treasury. It needs to go somewhere. The (government's) hope is that it will go into hiring/spending and the real economy. Even if that is what happens to the majority of the new money supply (debatable) a large amount will go into financial assets for people who want to preserve their wealth. The expected result (IMO) would be stocks to go up in USD purely because of demand for them. This can alse been seen as inflation or maybe financial asset inflation. The fundamentals of the economy are not good, but the new money has to go somewhere. After paying for living expenses etc, there aren't many places to put it besides the stock market.

A final thought is that if consumer price inflation remains low and financial assets catch all the inflation, the "rich" or invested benefit the most. However, its arguable that financial asset inflation without CPI is a better result for most people vs high CPI and a stock market crash. I would be interested to know if this a framework used by the Fed or just me as a random guy on the internet.

lammalamma25··on Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)
This isn't a full explanation, but might be worth thinking about. CS bachelor's education track is unique enough it is hard to switch into. If you are electrical/mechanical/aerospace engineering you're taking a lot of the same classes until your 3 year or so. You can change your mind and switch majors within the hard engineering fields. It is similar if you want to switch from biology to chemistry etc. At least in my experience a CS degree starts and ends there. If you want to switch into CS you almost have to start your courses over unless you were computer engineering. So out of the average % of students switching majors, some switch out of CS, but very few switch into it.
lammalamma25··on The Anti-Amazon Alliance
I purchased a motorcycle air filter at a price that was too good to be true. It arrive after almost 2 weeks (basically from China) damaged. I returned it waited another two weeks and it arrived damaged again. Left a bad review and got an email response asking about my experience. Can't really fault amazon too much. The price told me there had to be a catch. At the same time, I'm annoyed that was allowed to happen at all on the platform. Now There is always a thought in my mind to have a backup plan when I purchase something I really need on Amazon.
lammalamma25··on Show HN: KarateClub a Python library for unsupervised machine learning on graphs
Very cool. This kind of work makes python and ML better for everyone. I'm not sure I have a use case at the moment, but I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this one.
lammalamma25··on Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker
I think some of the nuance here is that essential vs non-essential assumes a short time horizon. In the keyboard example, an "essential" service can probably operate with a broken keyboard for some amount of time before it is a major problem.(I hope) lawmakers are not trying to demand who can and can't stay open long term.
lammalamma25··on Cultivate the Skill of Undivided Attention, or “Deep Work” (2019)
Can you expand on that a little bit. I started that book based on a very strong recommendation, but found the first 20-30 pages to be defining "art" as a sort of amorphous everything that felt like it wasn't going towards a point. I decided not to finish the book, but have wondered if it would have been worth it.
lammalamma25··on Ask HN: What are some example of low tech improving your life?
Stretch ~15 minutes a day. You don't need a special routine or a bunch of research. Stretch whatever is sore/stiff. If you can't think of anything start by touching your toes. Think of it as general maintenance on your joints. The effort compounds and starts to feel really good after a few months.
lammalamma25··on Ask HN: What are some interesting projects to reuse your old devices?
Great platforms for CTF or pen-testing practice if that is something you enjoy. I have a few raspberry pis and old phones that I test out new tools and methods on. If something breaks or something I install looks questionable I can factory reset them (the phones) and its no big deal.
lammalamma25··on Authoritarian nations are turning the internet into a weapon
What's the answer? I grew up in the late 2000s and really believed the internet would challenge existing power structures to change. I think in a lot of ways it did. Even as a fairly technically sophisticated user I can't seem to think what to do about the backslide though. Maybe good open source tools? Maybe a career in cybersecurity? It seems like the bad has more resources and incentives than the good now.
lammalamma25··on What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?
Excel hot keys
lammalamma25··on UFO: Pilot who spotted famous Tic Tac breaks silence after 15 years
I think Occam's Razor says a good lawyer convinced the patent office to make a bad decision. Could be wrong, but this is easily explained by incompetence.
lammalamma25··on Launch HN: Convictional (YC W19) – Supplier Network for Retailers
What's your relationship with carriers? I spent a bit of time with "Large E-commerce company" We would have 3rd party sellers not delivering on time (or sometimes not delivering at all). They would claim FedEx/UPS was late or FedEx/UPS would claim it was on time but the 3rd party shipped with a different account than "Large E-commerce Company." It was a big headache for the people ensuring delivery and bad customer experience. It sounds like you want to sit as a sort of middle layer between sellers and supplies to ensure data quality. (is that correct?) If so, do you plan to integrate with carriers or how do you plan to address that.
lammalamma25··on I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb
I'd be interested in someone with a good profile selling it to a bad actor for a lump sum. I'm not saying this happens, but it seems like it would be easy to do/very hard to prevent. Especially if you're moving out of the original listing.

Generally number of reviews is a good measure of quality IMO.

lammalamma25··on I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb
Its a reasonable risk/reward calculation. If this is your only 2 week vacation for the year, having a bad experience is a huge cost in time and probably money. If you're traveling regularly and save $X 95% of the time by using airbnb. That occasional bad experience is pretty bad, but more tolerable.
lammalamma25··on I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb
This is good advice. Once you stay in the host's place (anywhere) you're probably not getting all of your money back. I'm a bit sympathetic to this. Scams go both ways. If you walk away at trouble, you will usually get your money back.
lammalamma25··on I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb
I've been living in Airbnbs while backpacking through Australia for the last year. Here are some things I've learned for anyone needing some tips (Also because I like to share stories)

Pictures on the rental are meaningless. Only the price and amenities matter. Whatever the lowest 10% of price per night for a type of home (private vs shared room etc) is probably a scam. Don't rent in this price range. Money may be different for each person, but the upside of saving $100-$200 is way less than the downside of a last minute booking in a place you're unfamiliar with. I suspect most of the scams happening are people who book something that seems too good to be true.

If you're able to, message the host prior to booking with a generic intro and some generic questions. Many many times when the host got back to me for a great looking listing, alarm bells went off and I moved on. I personally ask what their internet speed is. If they don't know this its not a deal breaker, but their response can be pretty telling.

A lot of professional renters list on Airbnb. Especially multi-bedroom houses where you rent one bedroom. These can go either way, but are often a good deal. I personally like these because its a business transaction for both sides. Usually these types of listings are more open to negotiating on price, but its not staying in someone's home like an Airbnb might be pictured.

Reviews don't mean too much, but number of reviews and/or super host are pretty good barometers for quality. It is much harder to fake a lot of reviews. A less obvious red flag is the age of the listing vs number of reviews. If there are only 3-4 high reviews on something around for a long time, look closely at it. Even if the reviews aren't fake. There is a lot of incentive to not review a bad experience. Unfortunately price usually correlates with number of reviews.

I've personally never booked a new listing (no reviews). I'd be interested to know if I'm passing on some amazing deals, but my risk/reward tolerance doesn't allow it.

TLDR; Ignore the pictures look at price range compared to the marker and message hosts before booking at all.

Adjacent tip: Bring the bare basics with you (maybe this is backpacker logic talking). I usually have a knife/fork/spoon as well as some toilet paper and enough close to be warm without blanks. Don't rely on them to have things you absolutely can't survive without. Its stupid you have to do this, but you can rest a little easier having it with you if something goes wrong.

lammalamma25··on Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?
I'm mostly thinking of in home delivery for e-commerce. There was a company called Latch that was acquired that was more or less a smart lock for this purpose. You can see fairly regular news stories of Walmart/Amazon attempting this sort of thing. I believe amazon has some way to put items in the trunk of your car, but I don''t have a link handy.
lammalamma25··on Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?
Anything that reduces last mile shipping time. Drones route planning planning platforms, personnel allocation software, Smart fridges/locks. Big retailers are racing to <1 day shipping and buying fairly untested tools to try to get there.
lammalamma25··on Record number of colleges drop SAT/ACT admissions requirement
I've definitely like that as a thought experiment. Whether these tests assess your capabilities is already questionable. I wonder if there would be any objective way to measure outcomes if the tests were entirely different from one year to the next.
lammalamma25··on Record number of colleges drop SAT/ACT admissions requirement
Ignoring the debate about its usefulness, I have a really hard time with the line of thinking that minority/disadvantaged populations do poorly on the test therefore it is discriminatory.

Everyone takes the same test. Preparing for it more (prep classes etc) will make you do better. That is true, but what does a non discriminatory measure look like then? Unless it has exactly proportional results then it can be called discriminatory. What sort of test/measure can you create that will make having resources to prepare for it more than someone else not matter? Would that even be a good measure?

lammalamma25··on Applying deep learning to Airbnb search
You can't sort by price in search. I think that needs to be repeated anytime someone talks about airbnb's search, website, etc.
lammalamma25··on Online courses vs. colleges for software engineering
FWIW a few of the courses (AI and ML4T that I'm currently taking) have the online and on campus being taught at the same time by the same TAs/autograders. So they are literally the same course in terms of material. It's been interesting. In AI they post the grade distribution for OC vs OL. Medians are similar with slightly lower average for the online section so far.
lammalamma25··on A recent study of Harvard’s admissions practices
I think there is an aspect of this that is ugly but probably true. The wealth and power staying at Harvard isn't there because it deserves to be. It helps people that deserve to be there and they help it.
lammalamma25··on Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier
Does anyone else have trouble getting upset about these kind of stories? I can believe anti-competitive behavior is happening, but we're talking about snapchat stories and Instagram trends. It's not like they are a phone company raising prices on their customers or a railroad squeezing shippers. I get why this could be bad for a competitive marketplace, but does this hurt the consumer? What are the net downsides of this sort of behavior (not being sarcastic. I really have trouble thinking of any serious ones)
lammalamma25··on Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
Not that far into my career, but this one really burned me. Understanding what people's unstated motivations are is really important IMO. I spent a job working tirelessly at something that I valued a lot, but others didn't seem to care too much about. After a bit of time, I realized that most people were looking at the work from how it hurt/benefited them based on a specific (but not widely publicized) bonus structure. People's actions started to make a lot more sense when I looked at them through this lens. I was still able to do the type of work that I valued, but fitting it into other people's frameworks of what is important made a huge difference.
lammalamma25··on Avoiding Webscraping Throttling Using Python and Tor as a Proxy
Replying to myself here. This will not work because the packet still has to go back to the spoofed address. What a poorly thought out comment.
lammalamma25··on Avoiding Webscraping Throttling Using Python and Tor as a Proxy
Cool article but couldn't you just spoof your IP using something like socket?
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