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mheiler

52 karma · joined July 2, 2011

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mheiler··on Apple tells Telegram to take down protestor channels in Belarus
Apple is taking sides with the oppressors. Shameful but predictable: "When it comes to hanging the capitalists they will sell us the rope." (supposedly Lenin)
mheiler··on Facebook Said to Create Censorship Tool to Get Back into China
It's an improvement for the people in China.
mheiler··on Nestlé Wants to Sell You Both Sugary Snacks and Diabetes Pills
Nestle is trying to avoid the trap Coke and McDonalds fell into: Only offering unhealthy food choices and loosing the young generation of health-conscious consumers. They can't go the Wholefoods way since organic is inherently more expensive and harder to scale. Nestle is a food-tech company that wants to feed the globe. Now they try to do it in a more healthy way. I don't know why Bloomberg is so negative about that.
mheiler··on Ask HN: Is Python dying?
I'd say it does well compared to other languages: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=python%20tutorial%2C...
mheiler··on My first ten-day Vipassana retreat
A while ago I did a Contemplation course where you do sitting & walking meditation for ~9h / day. The experience was very similar. It's fascinating when you look into spiritual practices of different religions: There is so much in common. E.g., when you read from Buddhist teachers vs. Catholic saints vs. modern mindfulness meditation. I strongly recommend to pick up one of these and experience them.
mheiler··on AI will cause “structural collapse” of law firms by 2030
More than AI I would like to see standardisation and templates for common law problems. Like what creative commons did for copyright. Normal humans can use and very quickly understand them.

I have absolutely no interest in reading dozens of terms of service or purchase contracts I use every day, which are all wordy and hard to read, and say basically the same.

mheiler··on The best icon is a text label
Icons are little symbols that are equally incomprehensible in any language.
mheiler··on Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Faces Morale Challenge
I didn't know that McKinsey knows Tech.
mheiler··on To Raise Productivity, Let More Employees Work from Home (2014)
Someone finally ran a real study. I wish companies would run such experiments much, much more often.
mheiler··on MacBook Pro Repair Extension Program for Video Issues
Same here. It's a shame since otherwise this ~5y old computer still is holding up well.
mheiler··on OpenBSD kernel source file style guide
I like that it's short.
mheiler··on A Large Scale Study of Programming Languages and Code Quality in GitHub [pdf]
The nice thing about the paper is that they try to put data where others put guesses, rants, expectations, and believes. Arguing with data is actually difficult (and rare) in the software engineering field.

The practical result is that language choice doesn't matter since the effects are very small.

mheiler··on Eleven countries studied, one inescapable conclusion – the drug laws don’t work
Making drugs legally available in pharmacies would lead to: (1) organised crime looses a large chunk of its business, (2) no need for dealers to advertise to new users, they won't get the business anyways, (3) drugs would have medical-grade quality control and likely be cheaper than on the black market, (4) drugs can be taxed and this money can go into prevention and medical care, (5) users are less likely to need to commit crimes to support their habit, (6) resources in law enforcement get freed for other things.

The ethical question is if drug use would go up and thus a legalise-drugs policy would be guilty of leading people down a bad and potentially deadly path. If the article is right that won't be so.

mheiler··on Why don’t software development methodologies work?
Summary: No article containing the word "methodology" is worth reading. Instead, spend time talking and listening and understanding exactly which problem you need to solve.
mheiler··on Yahoo: Kicking off 30 days of change
Focus on logos.
mheiler··on Clojure core.async and Go: A Code Comparison
The concrete example is a perfect use case for a macro: In other languages you have to understand and change the compiler implementation to achieve the same effect. That's most likely more work.
mheiler··on A Google Reader Replacement written in Haskell and Ur
You never know. But you can reduce the likelihood for that to happen by paying for it.
mheiler··on "River" detection in text
Note to myself: Don't study typography.
mheiler··on Save your eyes, start using f.lux
I have a color profiled MBP and also see unreliable transitions now and again. Opening System Preferences > Displays > Color and flipping two profiles back and forth fixes it.