Hacker News Reader

martin1975on Farewell, Google Maps

Google Maps strength is largely due in part to their surveying of roads with those funky looking vehicles I think most of us have seen. If one were to develop an app that could use anyone's GPS to do the same as what Google is paying money for... it could pose a real threat to them. A "crowdsourced" map of sorts..

martin1975on Project Fuchsia: Google Is Quietly Working on a Successor to Android

I can already hear professor Tanenbaum's evil laughter, followed by "I told you so" :)

Although for the life of me, I cannot figure out why Google suffers so hard from NIH syndrome and didn't go with something like seL4/Genode. Do they just want control of absolutely everything they touch?

martin1975on Facebook to Remove Misinformation That Leads to Violence

well put. I am for both options existing on the internet - for people who want an AOL/Compuserve/tailored kind of internet as well as for people who like to live on the UNIX command line and peruse gopher for news :).

The 1st Amendment, which I admit I treat as the 'gospel' of free speech in these cases, allows for both. It just seems private enterprise in certain geographic areas of the world tends to skew more toward one view of the internet while leaving out the other in the cold... I'm trying to put this is mildly as I can :).

martin1975on Facebook to Remove Misinformation That Leads to Violence

exactly and I do not disagree. There is wisdom however in allowing the maximum latitude to everyone in their expression. It is my belief that the 1st amendment through its numerous evolutions, refinements and interpretations in the 200+ year history of American jurisprudence allows for more freedom of expression than what Mark Zuckerberg and his investors or Jack Dorsey and his investors can come up with....

I am certain they all disagree with me ;).

edit: the hardest thing when faced with offensive (personally to me, or someone else) content is to ignore it and let it die without a response in the case where it is legal. What was that saying? Do not feed the troll....?

martin1975on Facebook to Remove Misinformation That Leads to Violence

You're absolutely correct. I am merely saying, for maximum coverage/attention spans, it would be prudent to go by the SCOTUS rulings, even for private entities. While that may initially turn -some- people away because of their... views, shall we say, eventually I think it will pay off in the long run and attract even more visitors than had they remained constrained by abridging the 1st Amendment on their platforms.

martin1975on Facebook to Remove Misinformation That Leads to Violence

Correct. But how has not going by the wisdom of SCOTUS' rulings by private entities played out? Even Y Combinator agreed it hasn't gone well, or they wouldn't have bootstrapped GAB.ai at some point in the past.

Once you start looking at those effects... makes you wonder, right? Speaking of dick pics, I don't think you can post one on HN. You could do a link to one, but it'll get greyed out/downvoted..not removed, unless I'm mistaken.

martin1975on Facebook to Remove Misinformation That Leads to Violence

1+1=2 is allegedly an unbiased both fact and opinion.

martin1975on Facebook to Remove Misinformation That Leads to Violence

The only thing that can and ought to be realistically removed is illegal speech and SCOTUS has already defined what that is... Any other attempts, while well intentioned, will probably backfire. FB seems to take one step forward and two steps back each time they try to take some moral high ground when it comes to free speech... I like the fact they recently increased transparency behind who is paying for ads - whether they are advertising fake or true info, the reader gets to decide what's veritable vs what isn't ultimately, as it should be. Now, they will "identify misinformation".. in other words, they will appoint themselves as adjudicators of what is truth (e.g. "mis-information") vs what is not... they are a medium for free speech - not a scientific, peer-review type of website where consensus kills off or approves publishing of content.

This continuous grasping at straws by FB, Twitter, google, whomever really - of determining what is acceptable in the realm of opinion/1st Amendment speech is really exhausting and will mean the death of their platforms.

martin1975on San Francisco: Where a six-figure salary is 'low income'

San Diego has more space than the bay area however good RE is super expensive here too.. One way to avert high cost is to live on a boat. Moorage fees are fairly low (relative to rent) and a boat beats most vans, cars or even RVs.. I've heard co's like Netflix pay 250k or higher, and even at that rate you'd need a spouse/2nd income to be able to afford a home + family.

martin1975on E-Cigarette Maker Juul Labs Is Raising $1.2B

Personally I like my Phix... twice the amount of nic juice, about the same price and bigger battery. Definitely more action for about the same amount of money. They're not the best kid on the block..just the first in this category.

martin1975on I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA

That word 'testable', is very loaded. :) But I get what you mean. Are there things that we can't test that do exist?

martin1975on I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA

I love your optimism.

martin1975on I'm Scott Aaronson, quantum computing/computational complexity researcher. AMA

Am I hearing this right, you think the whole multiverse concept is... meta-physics at best?

martin1975on Massacring C Pointers

Thank you!

martin1975on Twitter Will Show Who Pays for Ads and How Much They Spend

I dislike both Twitter & Facebook, and am on the verge of closing both accounts, however I give them kudos for this - increasing transparency instead of censorship. While I understand our desire and pursuit for truth, I would like to leave the interpretation of any ultimate truths and meaning to rest with the end user, and not with any corporation or even government.

martin1975on Massacring C Pointers

Apparently Mr Traister has written a number of other books - https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B001H6UPHY/ - according to Amazon...

Made me wonder if the quality of the content in the other 11 books is anything like the one the Woz took apart.

martin1975on U.S. Supreme Court to hear civil forfeiture case

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17210880

This is even more egregious. He will probably get it back eventually through much legal maneuvering but it shouldn't be this easy to screw up some poor soul's life because of a few bad apples this law was enacted for, namely hard to impossible to prosecute drug cartels. These forfeiture laws are basically hammers turning every case into a nail, regardless of merit.

martin1975on IRC.com Bought by London Trust Media, Pledges an IRC Revival

yep, despite Zuckerberg's attempt to turn a social network(s) into an online stalking tool for your unrequited lover.

martin1975on What Happened to Alan Dershowitz?

He got red-pilled after having been blue pilled for a while. I guess he's purple now.

martin1975on Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say

It's kind of amazing to me that to this day Tether has yet to release an audit that proves a 1 to 1 relationship between USD to Tether.... We might not have seen the real bottom yet, if suspicion about Tether's insolvency eventually turns out to be true.

martin1975on I fear Google's control of the web

well, there's two ways to solve that. Regulate or invest in the competition .. or create competition.

Which one would you like?

martin1975on Alternatives to Google Products

I pay for Google Apps, $5/month and I'm quite certain the anti-privacy factor is drastically reduced vs when one just freeloads their apps where as the OP says, "you are the product."

martin1975on Inventor says Google is patenting work he put in the public domain

I'm trying to wrap my head around your distinction - is pseudo code that demonstrates Quicksort different than an actual implementation of it in, say, C, C++, Python?

How about where the line's even thinner - Amazon's infamous 'one click purchase' 'algorithm' - which they managed to patent - would you call that an 'idea'? An 'implementation'? A 'process'?

I think anything, including ideas can be patented - and if Google is trying to go by the spirit of the law rather than being Pharisaic about it, they need to cut this guy in for a percentage of the patent of his idea, rather than shafting him because they can.

martin1975on Apple introduces macOS Mojave

Notch decreases function and is aesthetically displeasing.

3.5 mm = 1) there is no way a wireless medium will ever have better throughput than a wired medium over a superb DAC - ever, 2) dongle, 3) extra battery worry now for BT.

OpenGL, I will grant you that one, since both Metal and/or Vulkan are a vast improvement on OpenGL.

martin1975on Apple introduces macOS Mojave

the notch...no 3.5mm aux...no OpenGL... the hits just keep on coming. Is this what passes for "invention" today? What's next, deprecating USB?

martin1975on Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

Color me naive but it can't be that bad, maybe they will surprise the FOSS community by opensourcing the NT kernel. Satya has said it is a possibility. And he is probably the only CEO who has been friendly toward FOSS.

martin1975on A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it

Yes.. they aren't religious, they're just mostly ass backwards, as anyone who has set foot in Albania can attest to. But to deny the islamic influence, IMHO, would be silly.

martin1975on A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it

Mostly atheist? You clearly haven't been to Albania...

martin1975on A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it

If there's truth to it, without understanding the govt's rationale about this, it looks about as un-American and un-capitalistic as it gets.... goes against the grain of who we are as a country.

martin1975on A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it

Sorry, that just doesn't make any sense. Take it to an extreme... if this can be done to anyone for no reason like you suggest - e.g. "he looks guilty, so I'll search/forfeit whatever funds I find" - then that's a major breakdown.

Assuming you are correct- and I don't know - then even if that is the case, there has to be a way to get the money back however arduous or red-tape it may be, and eventually claim damages for the administrative cost of recovery.

We're not a banana republic... yet (I hope). If they did it to him in Albania, then I wouldn't be nearly surprised or possibly at all. I've encountered corrupt border patrol officials I had to bribe to get out of a mess.. and it was in one of the Balkan countries, I won't name which.