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pba

28 karma · joined May 22, 2014

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pba··on Ask HN: Do we need a Google Customers Union? Could it work?
I would say neither 'government' nor a 'union' are the answers in this case. In the mostly free-market based economy that we live in today (thinking of the USA and most European countries) the proper solution is to 'vote with your dollar' and go with a provider other than Google. This increases market competition and incentivizes Google to improve their services.
pba··on Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
Here's a compilation of some of the instances he's done so: https://streamable.com/sr9o2s
pba··on Ask HN: How to prosper under negative interest rates?
The market falling as a whole does not mean that every single individual investment one could have a position in during that time loses value.
pba··on Facebook's fail is going to be epic (2008)
I predicted Facebook's success years ago. I think what everybody misses, even within the tech industry is that Facebook (and now Instagram) have one very important 'killer app' for the modern world that nobody realizes. That is that those websites are everybody's defacto 'photo album' for the 21st century. I know people whose entire life in photos from the last 15 years is entirely on Facebook and likely not backed up anywhere else. Every major life event is readily available in seconds with dates attached and even the nice or mean things that friends and family said about each photo at the time. This was what MySpace, Friendster, Google+, and the other apps of the time did not understand. They concentrated on crafting some pointless 'social network experience' when in reality nobody cared to switch anyway because all of their photos and memories were somewhere else already, and I think this is what keeps people on the platform.
pba··on Please make your products work with URLs
Maybe this was the whole point of the author's post.. but I'm fairly certain the reason the author's use case is not easily workable is because the OEMs mentioned are deliberately discouraging the ability to play anything that is not inside some sort of DRM control. They don't want you to just be able to play any URL. Its not a technical problem, its a content management problem.
pba··on Coolest Things I Learned in 2018
To be more clear, when I click on Hacker News items I have come to expect them to be of a somewhat more thoughtful nature; a la "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". Its my personal opinion that this item is more like a 'Dear Diary' entry and of significantly less intellectual value than say "Genomics Code Exceeds ExaOps on Summit Supercomputer", which is one of your own excellent submissions. The "world I live in" is one where I enjoy Hacker News items like your submission and do not enjoy this one.

I understand the "whole point" as put forth by the original writer who made up his own definition of sonder, but just because I paint a picture of a griffin doesn't mean it exists in reality. And similarly the definition of the word 'sonder' as he gives it also does not exist in reality. The problem I have with this thought experiment is that the internet is perpetuating the myth that this word has a valid historical etymology with widely accepted usage where in fact it sprang fully formed from an artist's mind.

pba··on Coolest Things I Learned in 2018
This article (post?) is the 2019 version of chain mail. Weak insights, no academic substantiation. I had to stop reading at the 'words for emotions' part.. 'sonder' and the rest are not dictionary words; they were made up by some guy. Yet this ridiculousness continues its way around the internet..
pba··on HoweyCoins – An educational tool to alert investors to possible fraud
I wouldn't think so, its "Howey" with a 'w' rather than "honey".
pba··on Apple Is No Longer America's Favorite Tech Company
It does seem like Apple under Cook is in 'maintenance mode'- by which I mean the company is only making incremental improvements in their existing product lines without designing brand new 'wow' consumer items that take the world by storm and invent new user interaction paradigms. It will be interesting to see if another creative mind will be able to do that again for Apple. I don't see Tim Cook as having that spark.
pba··on Apple Is No Longer America's Favorite Tech Company
The article uses some of the worst graphs I've ever seen. Wouldn't pie charts have been clearer?
pba··on National (JavaScript) Security Agency
Agreed, this code was probably written by a contractor rather than one of their mathematicians I'd imagine