morley

I'm surprised no one has mentioned keyboard portability. I find it incredibly hard to switch from ctrl on Windows to cmd on Mac. In college I had to switch frequently between Windows and Mac, and it was a nightmare.

Since then, I've committed to only use MacOS on a Macbook and Windows on a real keyboard. That seems to preserve my muscle memory the best. But things can be rough when I use a Windows laptop or a standalone Mac keyboard.

I agree with you, but governments will ask: is it better to back an expensive technology, or a cheaper one like wireless? Is it the government's responsibility to provide the state-of-the-art. or the minimum viable?

I'd prefer it if us Americans would believe in the former, but unfortunately I think our culture expects the government to do the latter (or nothing at all).

> I wanted to give an example of a potential threat.

I really don't like this line of thinking. It's the same one used by news organizations to plump up their stories, or by politicians to make an improbable threat seem more real. In both of those cases, I think the long-term effect is to cause the public to think that very rare events are a lot more common. The result is not a culture of wariness but a culture of fear.

I'd much rather people present "worst-case potential threats" instead as "likely potential threats."

According to the article, BH was seeking terms that had a big upside and protection against downside:

> Under the proposed agreement, Berkshire Hathaway would have provided a convertible loan to Uber that would have protected Buffett’s investment should Uber hit financial straits, while providing significant upside if Uber continued to grow in value, said the people, who spoke under condition of anonymity because the discussions were private.

I don't think your dystopic vision is what's happening here. From the article:

> The Walmart employees will not be obligated to continue working for the company after they get their degrees, and must put up only $1 a day toward the cost of classes.

> Chinese citizens generally are evaluated for visas, mortgages, schools, and employment by social credit scores.

I only learned about social credit scores last month. Have they actually been around for much longer? That seems unlikely, given that Wikipedia says it's still proposed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System

It seems disingenuous to claim that a proposed system is in general use.

I've used Questions for Confluence before. I've noticed that from the "supply side" (someone writing documentation), it's not better than writing a Confluence article. From the "demand side" (someone having a question), it doesn't beat the immediacy of Slack. So while I'm glad to have the option to have team SO, I'm not sure it solves the documentation problem better than other tools.

Interesting that this appears on the front page at the same time as this story:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16828973

I don't have a particular point of view either way other than to say that context matters, and pragmatism matters, and the solution to these potential problems can't be "remove all surveillance" any more than it can be "surveil everything."

This was a really interesting story, and I'm interested in hearing even more detail about how they cut the temple into pieces. What machinery did they use to do the cutting? How much material was lost by this method? How did they make sure the pieces fit back together again?

Is there a book that goes into this detail (or any books about similar projects)?

> The nutjob isn't a black swan, though: they're an extreme version of the response that a lot of people are having.

I appreciate you laying out your thoughts, but I vehemently disagree with this idea. Like all terrorists, the shooter's actions were grossly disproportionate to their cause. A lot of people were affected by Youtube demonetization, but only one of them chose to perpetrate a violent act in response to it. That's the very definition of a black swan.

The thesis if my main comment is that media coverage that focuses on these shooters (a) makes it seem more common, and (b) legitimizes either their actions or their cause, which causes (c) more people to perpetrate mass shootings in the future.

I'm not saying that Youtube handles demonetization in the best way possible. I'm saying that taking a gun to the problem is completely off the wall, and that this sort of media coverage just adds fuel to the fire. And that the media coverage is just a mirror to the values of our society. And that I'm frustrated by this sort of reaction, and don't have any recourse other than to point out that there's another way to react.

I'm really surprised at how many of these HN comments are so sympathetic to this murderer's cause. To me, this illustrates how dangerous this type of reporting is, this media obsession with the perpetrators of mass shooting. This is the problem that I feel utterly powerless against. You can make more mental health programs, pass more gun control legislation, pay more for security, but what can you do when the culture around you lionizes these sorts of people?

Self-immolation is nowhere near in the same ballpark as taking a gun into an office and murdering a bunch of people.

I really don't like the parent article's line of thinking of explaining or justifying this person's act. There are plenty of ways of protesting that don't involve hurting others. And it's mind-boggling that we have to point that out at all today.

I think it depends on your reasoning for not sharing data to third parties.

It seems like you're arguing that sharing data is wrong because, in the wrong hands, the data could be used to personally identify someone. In my mind, these are the ways that can happen:

1. The data is sent to an advertiser who can target based on that data. Seems possible, so it's relevant that this data isn't being shared with an ad firm. 2. The data is sent to a third party, whose employees can access and leak the data. 3. The data is sent to a third party, whose data gets compromised.

So the trade-off is, what is the value of having user information in a tool for analytics purposes, versus the chance that (2) or (3) (or any unknowns happen)? My argument is that analytics firms are not in the business of leaking or selling data; their business hinges on their client's data privacy. So to me, this seems like a reasonable trade-off for certain types of data.

As for whether HIV status is the type of data that's unreasonable... I can buy that argument either way. I've never used Grindr but I can imagine it being extremely relevant to its users. And any data that has product impact is useful in an analytics setting. For example, if Grindr has some features that make it easier for HIV-positive or negative people to filter, then they'd be interested in understanding whether it's being used in the product. Then again, I can equally see them deciding it's not worth the risk, and removing it.

If you think sharing sensitive data is wrong under all circumstances, on principle, then you're entitled to your beliefs, but that would seem to me awfully close to religion.

For what it's worth, the most private data here is shared to analytics companies for Grindr's only analytical use. My guess is that Grindr's agreement with Apptimize and Localytics asks for the strictest possible protection of that data. If anyone at Apptimize or Localytics has access to that data, I'd be incredibly surprised.

This sort of deal isn't the same as sharing the HIV status to Google or Facebook so that advertisers can target or exclude that user information for the purposes of advertising.

For people who think this is still wrong, I'm curious what their pragmatic alternative is. How else are app developers supposed to analyze their app performance? The open source, self-hosted pickings are slim. (I can only think of Piwik, which in my experience has a dated feature set and severe performance issues.) Not everyone can afford to perform their own product analysis. Using a third-party analytics saas is kind of the only way to go and seems like a reasonable tradeoff of security for product visibility.

I'm a little surprised that in the article, the tech lead is in charge of breaking up a task into parts. That seems like something a capable SEII should be able to handle, and it only improves them to be able to develop that skill. (Though maybe that means I was a lot less effective as a tech lead than I thought.)

I think the preference against ids is covered over point #2 about specificity. id styles will always override class styles, so when you're trying to apply a class-based style guide to an element that's already been styled with an id, you end up having to use !important which just creates a similar specificity problem for someone else down the line.

Of course, you can still do this if you want to. To quote Chris Rock, "you can drive a car with your feet if you want to." But if you work on a large code base that lots of developers have touched, and lots of future developers will touch, you run into these issues all the time. And the bugs that come about can be tough to spot and to fix.

Rule 19 reads:

> 19. Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

The rule means basically what you said. "To get characters into trouble" means basically the first third of a movie or so, or the point in the movie that "kicks the action off". So I'm not sure what in that rule can be reasonably disagreed with.

I'm not sure how complicated (or how stupid) this question is, but what's the difference in security between using this versus an SSH tunnel as a proxy?

I'm not sure you read the article in question.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

The costs aren't high because of cost of living, they're high because of cushy agreements with workers unions and construction companies, among a myriad other things.

How does one eliminate counterparty risk? The only thing I could think of is insurance, and I'm guessing no insurance company will underwrite that sort of policy.

> HBO is hamstrung by its lucrative cable tv deals in the US

I'm not sure this is true. HBO Go is available for subscription in the US, is available on many streaming platforms. Additionally, you can subscribe to HBO through Amazon Prime (among other places; I just happen to use the Prime subscription). I can't comment on differences in marketing spend or consumer goodwill, but from my perspective, I see the same level of service between HBO and Netflix (though admittedly, Netflix is usually more stable).

Not to mention that since WoW, Diablo 3, Hearthstone, and Overwatch have been massive successes. (I'm pretty sure SC2 sold well, but not as much as these other ones.) I can't think of another studio that has such a consistent commercial and critical track record.

I'm going to ask what might be a dumb question, because I don't know any better. But is there any statistical evidence that arbitration results in worse outcomes for the consumer, or is all the hate theoretical for now? People on HN and otherwise speak about arbitration like it's an auto-loss for the consumer, but it's not like our court systems are guaranteed to be much fairer.

EDIT:

It looks like the bottom of the article explains that the US Consumer Bureau studied arbitration and found it anti-consumer:

As arbitration clauses appeared in tens of millions of contracts, the consumer agency was specifically mandated to study arbitration under the Dodd-Frank financial law in 2010. That effort culminated in a 728-page report, released in March 2015, that challenged longstanding assumptions about arbitration.

The agency found that once blocked from suing, few people went to arbitration at all. And the results for those who did were dismal. During the two-year period studied, only 78 arbitration claims resulted in judgments in favor of consumers, who got $400,000 in total relief.

It seems like they decided based on the context of the case:

> In the message, the man gave details of how to access his bank account and where he had hidden money in his house.

Further into the article, they also mention that there are a lot of government regulations about proportions of high-class beds to lower-class ones, needing approval to buy expensive medical equipment, and the number of physicians.

From the end of the article:

> [American] Conservatives will point to the Medisave accounts and the emphasis on individual contributions, but ignore the heavy government involvement and regulation. Liberals will point to the public’s ability to hold down costs and achieve quality, but ignore the class system or the system’s reliance on individual decision-making.

> Pro's need a machine that can evolve over time.

Is this really true though for Apple's target market? I'm guessing that if I'm an artist for Pixar and I need a new "professional" machine, the company is 9 times out of 10 going to buy me a new computer rather than buying me a video card upgrade. I'd imagine most large corporations would do something like that since it's more scalable than upgrading individual parts piecemeal.

Buying one "pro" machine and upgrading it over a number of years seems like more of what I'd call an "enthusiast" strategy. I think it's reasonable that Apple is betting that Mac "enthusiasts" would be willing to upgrade their machine wholesale after a number of years (maybe recouping value by reselling their old machine) rather than extensively researching new video cards and buying one off Newegg.

Maybe they're wrong and people aren't willing to do that, but it's their prerogative to place that bet.

I personally use Authy, and it's survived several migrations to new phones.

It's my understanding that the Impossible burger _has_ to be served medium-rare; otherwise, you're boiling off all the myoglobin (the stuff that makes it taste meaty) and just tasting the pea protein (the stuff that's in every other veggie burger). It's unconscionable that they'd serve it well-done. (Though knowing Umami Burger, I'm not exactly surprised.)

I'm sure you've come across it, but in case you haven't, have you seen Spritz? http://spritzinc.com/

I'm fairly lazy so rather than make one or two cups of coffee a day, I prefer to make a one-week batch of cold brew at a time. (It's also a pain to manually grind that much coffee at once.) Cold brew is a lot more forgiving about "grind freshness."

I'm considering buying a grinder, but it'll probably be $100-200, and I'm not sure if that's worth the price when the coffee shop will do it for me.