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onreact

128 karma · joined December 6, 2019

Helping people with blogs, social media and search. Popularizing ideas, people and things. onreact.com | popularization.info | bike-blog.info | obstacle.love
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onreact··on Davos Elite Genetic Secrets for Sale: The Davos Collection Heads to Auction
The event had to be postponed due to "unresolved legal issues" already.
onreact··on Pop Songs Are Getting Sadder and Angrier
Here's the original source: https://aeon.co/ideas/why-are-pop-songs-getting-sadder-than-...
onreact··on Ask HN: I think I hate programming, but love technology. What should I do?
Consider some of these:

customer service, project management, marketing, social media, product testing, content creation

I transitioned from Web developer tasks gradually to more content and people tasks over the years.

onreact··on The CIA’s Infamous, Unsolved Kryptos Cryptographic Puzzle Gets a ‘Final Clue’
This article has been submitted four times in total. This is the fourth attempt in four days.
onreact··on “Google Drive” would like to receive keystrokes from any application
Intriguing! Can you please provide a bit more of context?
onreact··on Trickle‐down technology and why it doesn't work (2013)
Yeah, tools built for experts usually won't be adopted by the mainstream unless they are simplified.

I don't mean dumbed down but reduced in complexity to allow beginners to use it without having to acquire expertise.

onreact··on Clues That Neanderthals Didn't Know How to Make Fire (2017)
No, I read about it.
onreact··on Genetically engineered moth is released into an open field
Please update your science here:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070308220454.h... (2007)

and here:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180709101216.h... (2018)

"Far from just being the product of our parents, scientists have now shown that widespread transfer of genes between species has radically changed the genomes of today's mammals, and been an important driver of evolution."

onreact··on Off-Facebook activity
I don't think they will tell you the whole truth.

It's just like with Google history you can "delete".

They have the data stored for the authorities anyway.

They are required to do it by law (Patriot Act etc.)

onreact··on Clues That Neanderthals Didn't Know How to Make Fire (2017)
Yeah. You need actual survival training to be able to make fire. Good reminder.

I wanted to learn it myself. Without matches I'm lost in the woods.

onreact··on Clues That Neanderthals Didn't Know How to Make Fire (2017)
Intriguing. I just recently realized that Neanderthals actually were wiped off due to climate change.

Now I know exactly why. Without the ability to make fire they were pretty helpless during cold periods.

onreact··on Genetically engineered moth is released into an open field
Also some genes are known to actually "jump" between species.

We may end up "limiting" other animals too.

As if Frankenfood and pesticides weren't hazardous enough.

onreact··on Facebook apologizes for translating name of China's president to “Mr. Shithole”
Hilarious! Trusting Artificial Idiocy algorithms with such tasks is a recipe for disaster.

You can automate but always make sure actual humans check before publication.

onreact··on Ask HN: I'm a total jerk, would you hire me?
When you're too smart, unique, megalomaniac to get a job you probably need to work for yourself.

Entrepreneurship is also the better option compared to wage-slavery. Self-employment is somewhere in the middle.

Try working for yourself and when you succeed headhunters will flock to you anyway.

onreact··on What if the Universe has no end?
IMHO the beginning and end of the universe are typical anthropocentric ideas. Our life begins and ends so does a universe? Hardly.

The other theories mentioned in the article are more likely.

onreact··on Ask HN: How do we know that WhatsApp doesn't spy on messages?
As far as I know Mark Zuckerberg already admitted that Facebook is spying on the Messenger messages:

https://thenextweb.com/facebook/2018/04/05/facebook-confirms...

Now Zuckerberg is merging Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram:

https://mashable.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-speaks-on-whats...

Thus we can be pretty sure that WhatsApp messages are also being monitored.

onreact··on Software is a focus intensive industry
The way you define focus sounds a bit strange to me. Focus is indeed needed for programming - that's why you need to be in the zone when coding - but it's the focus we refer to usually.

As we live in a frantic attention economy now focus is indeed very valuable as dealing with the ongoing bombardment with distractions is truly expensive.

Just think about all those remote workers getting reminded all the time that some new Slack, Flock, Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook, e-mail messages arrived.

All the companies above make money by hijacking our attention and forcing us to focus on the work we do for them for free instead. Imagine us focusing at the code instead.

onreact··on Software is a focus intensive industry
Yeah, also people who are blind and use screen readers will have it spelled out char by char each time as its assumed to be an acronym.

Use bold, italics, text-marker effects instead.

onreact··on Ask HN: Do you ever contact people who have had a positive impact on you?
Expressing gratitude is always a good idea. The way you do reminds me of what we call "outreach" nowadays.

Reaching out to people by mail usually works the way you describe it.

The only way most people do it wrong is that they don't say "thank you" first but they want something from you.

onreact··on Visualising the amount of microplastic we eat
That's nanoplastic.
onreact··on Visualising the amount of microplastic we eat
Many types of cancer, infertility, birth defects, damaged DNA as far as I remember.
onreact··on Visualising the amount of microplastic we eat
I guess by fake foods you refer to processed foods etc. but I'm not sure you are right.

As far as I understand organic fruits and vegetables growing exposed to air and rain would end up polluted a lot more than indoor farming products for example.

Eating local also depends on where you live. Apparently most of the microplastic that is around stems from car tires so that produce farmed near highways or cities will be more polluted with microplastic than the one they transport by plane from New Zealand.

onreact··on Warren Buffett is spending billions to make Iowa 'the Saudi Arabia of wind'
Sounds good. Let's just hope he doesn't mean to become the Sheikh of Iowa. In a democracy being like SA is not desirable.

Remember that SA is killing dissidents and subjugating women and minorities. It's basically an absolute monarchy.

They have also invaded neighboring Bahrain to subdue the democratic revolution there.

I'd choose my comparisons and metaphors more wisely.

Wind energy is fantastic as long as it doesn't kill birds (that depends on the way the wind turbines are built and where they stand).

It's strange how one of the richest men on the planet demands government subsidies though. Or is it just me?

onreact··on Visualising the amount of microplastic we eat
Tasty! That's a lot indeed.

Which types of diet contain more plastic than others?

I'm a vegan for example. Does this mean more or less plastic than average?

Which materials do not end up as microplastic? I assume natural fibres don't but besides them?

onreact··on Fake “like” factories – how we reverse engineered facebooks user IDs [video]
Yeah, create the problem and then provide the solution is one of the best business models.

Climate change is also making people rich now due to this logic.

onreact··on Fake “like” factories – how we reverse engineered facebooks user IDs [video]
Intriguing. On the other hand Facebook cracks down on new users and requires them to jump through many hoops to access the service.

My wife finally gave in and signed up to Facebook in order to be able to take part in a webinar she already payed for that was staged on the platform just to get her new account blocked for using a different device from the one she signed up.

They wanted her mobile phone number, photo and her ID (think passport).

She didn't want Facebook SPAM on her phone, she already gets bombarded by WhatsApp notifications and sending her photo again didn't help. She got banned for good. Also her IP was blocked so she couldn't sign up again.

onreact··on Is Nuclear Power Worth the Risk?
Thank you for adding some common sense to that debate. Safe nuclear is like "clean coal".
onreact··on Automating Hate
Yeah, I noticed that most Twitter trolls are still bots. Their quest to ban automated accounts didn't really work out until now.

For example when you watch tweets by Greta Thunberg most climate denial responses and hateful comments are automated.

Even when I told legit users not to feed those trolls they would respond by context-free climate change denial claims.

onreact··on Switzerland switching off its first nuclear plant on Friday
So what, just because CO2 is unhealthy now you prefer radiation that will poison the planet for millennia?

Try clean energy instead and don't use worse as an alternative for bad.

onreact··on Switzerland switching off its first nuclear plant on Friday
Are you kidding me?
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