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nowarninglabel

2,556 karma · joined March 22, 2010

CTO of Kiva: http://www.kiva.org

Always looking for ways to change the world for the better

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nowarninglabel··on Six Flags fingerprinted my son without consent, says mom
This is why legal governance is important. One could argue it's the customer's choice to enter into a theme park, so they could choose not to go instead if they don't want to give up their biometric data. But imagine you get in a car with friends to go to a theme park for the day and then you arrive and they want your fingerprints. That's a tough choice to say no, and most consumers won't say no. However, then when Six Flags sells or breaches the data later and folks have to deal with identity theft fallout they will suffer.

On the other hand, as long as we use biometrics as identifiers but not authenticators then it's not problematic if the data becomes public. Indeed, having a fingerprint might be a good option if that can allow for then not storing any other PII data. I think once companies really start to understand that PII is a liability, not an asset, we'll slowly see a shift in the industry back towards pseudo-anonymity.

nowarninglabel··on Lessons from Failed DocuSign Integration
The author seems to have buried the lead here: "Someone on the team noticed that if you refresh the page, you get logged in as the user that was making the API request"

And that is how the implementation works for many of Docusign's customers as a 'feature'. If that's true, that would seem like a potentially exploitable security hole. However, I'd have to question if that had something to do with the particular implementation, otherwise I'd expect more focus on the security repercussions.

nowarninglabel··on A Fifth of China’s Homes Are Empty (2018)
In fact, the earliest anti-housing policies were designed to harm Chinese residents of the city: https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/demolishing-the-ca...
nowarninglabel··on Problems plagued U.S. Navy destroyer Fitzgerald before fatal collision
They should get Captain Marquet of "Turn the Ship Around!" to go get them ship shape. The book has some really good lessons on how shifting leadership style and culture can produce dramatically better results.
nowarninglabel··on What software will you trust when you get senile?
There's actually a great company that has a solution/card for this: https://www.truelinkfinancial.com/
nowarninglabel··on How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project
"the first thing I did was hire a team in the Philipinnes to ensure I never had to stay up until 1am building lists"

Is it possible for anyone to share how they found people to hire/outsource building sales lists to?

nowarninglabel··on It will become easier to buy a house
They sort of weaken their own premise, first saying that:

"In the past two decades house prices have doubled in real terms"

Then saying: "Most empirical work shows that a 1% rise in the housing stock leads to a 2% fall in prices and rents, all else being equal. On that basis, a mass-downsizing would imply a cut in prices of about 5%."

When things have doubled in price, getting 5% off isn't really much help, especially when, as they noted, purchase taxes have gone up considerably.

nowarninglabel··on Taxpayers Should Never Subsidize Stadiums
Except, there are lots of reasons to subsidize subways, for example to encourage ridership which in effect can then decrease public roadway congestion. Thus, even the people who don't directly ride the subway still benefit. It also can reduce pollution as well has have local economic benefits. All of which benefits others, not just the riders.

Source: https://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Pages/transitstats... which gets its data from the Federal Transit Administration.

nowarninglabel··on Proto-internet trolls: Struensee and press freedom in 18th century Denmark
I believe the subtle point is that Struensee did these actions for the good of the people, only for the people to then use these new tools against him.

I'm not sure we know of Struensee's motivations, but we can see that he advocated for and temporarily obtained some outcomes that can be seen as almost universally good for the people.

Regardless, maybe one takeaway can be, just because you have given your life towards something good for others, don't expect to be thanked.

nowarninglabel··on Chinese Spacecraft Nears Landing on Far Side of Moon
That is so cool, can't believe had never heard of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera
nowarninglabel··on Fridge 0.2
Average price is $3.27/gallon in December.

Source: https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/RetailMil...

nowarninglabel··on Fridge 0.2
Would it be possible to run a comparison vs. some of the ultra-efficient mini-fridges out there? I had previously seen a few folks on youtube showing some of their setups with existing mini-fridges.

I live out on some land with just solar power and batteries for stretches of time and am weighing refrigeration options.

nowarninglabel··on People who disagree aren't trying to make things complex
Yes and no. Some developers really want to stay in the same place working on the same sorts of things and to have control over the domains they are working on. There are usually many reasons for this, some ones are easy to understand such as people who value autonomy in their work over the pure dollar value of salary that could be gained by job-hopping. For some folks, the idea of having to go somewhere new with different practices and where they may not be in charge of making decisions on the codebase (or at least not having any control over what goes into it) is terrifying.
nowarninglabel··on People who disagree aren't trying to make things complex
>I deliberately try to make things complex

I see this often with someone who has made it into a senior role and then is attempting to ensure job security through complexity. Reflecting this on to junior developers further reinforces that said developer has adopted (usually subconsciously) a fear-driven approach.

nowarninglabel··on Google Fusion Tables Shutting Down
This one hurts because I recommended to and helped a number of business users to use Fusion tables as an alternative to building out something in-house.

It's really weird for them to write: "Google has developed several alternatives, providing deeper experiences in more specialized domains" and then not actually provide any alternatives.

nowarninglabel··on Hook on PG&E Tower Eyed as Cause of Deadly Camp Fire
Everything has a cost. Controlled burns cost money.

Is the cost of regular controlled burns < the cost of eliminating most risk of wildfire starts? Im not sure we are qualified to answer that question without data and analysis.

nowarninglabel··on Google Employees Demand the End of Forced Arbitration Across the Tech Industry
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18560153 (which also links other comment threads on it)
nowarninglabel··on Yangtze River Port and Logistics: On-The-Ground Research Shows Assets Fabricated
Sometimes they end up investigating and at least getting someone to pay: https://www.reuters.com/article/macquarie-group-settlement-i... https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/business/sec-charges-reve...
nowarninglabel··on I’m Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
Who is best to work on this? Is there a firm that you'd recommend that specializes in this? We had a great person for a hard to fill position (blockchain skills needed) from a country that should be easy (Australia) but for various reasons this took us over 3 months to complete. Surely, we could do better than this for countries with exceptions such as Australia? Or is that the typical experience?
nowarninglabel··on Mozilla pulls Bypass Paywalls from Firefox add-ons store
Or at least hire review coordinators who can manage the program effectively. Our volunteers review 15,000+ loans a month. Happy to share insights with Mozilla on how to run an effective volunteer community and keep the pipeline flowing.
nowarninglabel··on Pivot or Fail?
"And I am not sure hard pivots are good for anyone"

Except, it was good for Slack and its investors and all of its users. Slack is oddly acknowledged in the first paragraph and then quickly forgotten about. There's a good "Masters of Scale" podcast about the Slack pivot and the Flickr pivot (which was also a hard pivot).

nowarninglabel··on Transitioning Google Cloud leadership after three great years
There's a great episode of "Masters of Scale" with Diane Greene where she talks about her time at VMWare and then about how she ended up taking the job of leading Google Cloud. https://mastersofscale.com/diane-greene-look-sideways/
nowarninglabel··on Doctors Are Fed Up with Being Turned into Debt Collectors
>In the rest of the economy, we agree on a price beforehand

This occurs in auto repair as well (though maybe less than it used to). Those repairs, in my opinion, have been quite stressful as well. Are there other industries where we bill afterward?

nowarninglabel··on When Hospitals Merge to Save Money, Patients Often Pay More
This is the same broken logic as people who think they need to go to the "world's best X doctor" for care. That inevitably leads to sub-standard care because everyone is trying to go to the same person for a service and getting rushed in and rushed out. Most of us don't need the best doctor at X in the world to perform our services. It's like thinking you need James Gosling or John Carmack to write the code for your small business website.
nowarninglabel··on Why I Quit Being a Therapist [video]
Thanks for documenting your story, appreciated reading through one of your blog posts and would recommend others to take a look.
nowarninglabel··on Justice Is Overrated
I like looking at things through a different lens. One thing to consider, maybe what we care most about is that no one is successful at 'cheating' within the system. That's true whether it's a concern of someone cheating citizenship by illegal immigration and then receiving healthcare / welfare services (not saying this is a real problem, but is a perceived problem) or it's a Wall Street banker illegally colluding with others to drive up a price for profit.

If that hypothesis were true, what could change about our current system to more effectively limit 'cheating'?

nowarninglabel··on Ask HN: What are some hacks of real founders who did things that don't scale?
Neat project. I wonder if our agricultural borrowers / partners in Kenya should be talking to you.
nowarninglabel··on U.S. Navy’s Costliest Carrier Was Delivered Without Elevators to Lift Bombs
Looked up some articles on the elevator tech for civilian use: https://www.businessinsider.com/germany-company-this-is-the-... https://www.wired.com/story/the-sideways-elevator-of-the-fut...

Looks pretty interesting

nowarninglabel··on Proof of Stake or Proof of Work, What's the Difference?
Not everyone wants to lend their money (I say this as someone who runs a crowdfunding loan site). Most cryptocurrency today is just being hodl'd by folks, not put into active investments. There are also not a lot of good, trustworthy investments available to those who want to lend directly in crypto, though I'm sure we'll get more and more as time goes on.
nowarninglabel··on Decrypting Crypto, from Bitcoin and Blockchain to ICOs (2017) [video]
Sort of depends on what you consider a consumer app. CryptoKitties and Loom Networks' ZombieBattleground and DelegateCall have some decent numbers. Then of course there is wallet software that interfaces with blockchain (e.g. Metamask), which could ask if consider a blockchain app or not.
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