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pjene

27 karma · joined January 26, 2014

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pjene··on Columbia Silences Its Marching Band
> Joe Schwartz, a 1992 graduate and former lawyer, said of his band experience, which began by playing a blowtorch, “It’s probably not a coincidence that I’m in the chair asking the dean for one more chance and then I’m the one in front of the judge asking for one more chance.”

Nice.

While the administration's disingenuous rulebook-throwing is fooling no one and tarnishing the university's reputation, it is healthy to have an occasional reminder that the government/administration is not your friend, and a movement of the people, which a scramble band is, would do well to find its way as independent citizens.

Columbia University football team sues for divorce from the band? My bet is on the band coming out on top.

pjene··on It's Coming: The Great Swift API Transformation
Objective-C has no object methods, just pure multiple-dispatch for a generic "select" operation? that's amazing.
pjene··on How Completely Messed Up Practices Become Normal
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-34592186

> The Chinese government is building an omnipotent "social credit" system that is meant to rate each citizen's trustworthiness.

pjene··on DOJ defers payments to local police agencies through asset forfeiture program
In practice, either the program was a money grab, or terminating it was. Public opinion has been that the program was a money grab, incentivizing state+local to aggressively seize funds under federal law, to get the "equitable sharing" kickbacks. Without "equitable sharing", states+locals have no incentive to seize funds to seize funds to send to the Feds.

We'll see what happens when the DOJ realizes how much of that $1.2B was driven by state incentives, and their dirty golden goose stops laying eggs

pjene··on DOJ defers payments to local police agencies through asset forfeiture program
This is surprising good news.

Took me three tries to read "defunds" properly, not as "defends".

pjene··on Born in the ’70s: Jack Ma’s Memo to Alibaba Employees on Management Shuffle
Senior Management ascension age is 45.

Jack Ma is 50, handing senior leadership to the 45+ crew. He's giving people a 5-10 year reign at the top, and keeping the funnel balanced to maintain that ratio.

pjene··on Putting $10M into UBeam illustrates what is wrong with tech investing
The Marissa Mayer who turned around Yahoo by... waiting for Alibaba stock holdings to grow in value to cover the negative value of Yahoo's own projects?
pjene··on Helping my students overcome command-line bullshittery
the standard writing tool in mathematics and computer science is the pencil. Or pen, if you are feeling cocky.

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/

pjene··on Helping my students overcome command-line bullshittery
That day, no one will pay you to do what you do.
pjene··on The “fake cell tower” story was PR for a cell phone company
http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

It's not a fake story, though, and no one in the press got "played". It's a real story, with the usual lazy sourcing and lazy reporting.

pjene··on Apple's SSL/TLS bug
"suddenly" is a funny way to say "over a span of years"....
pjene··on Apple's SSL/TLS bug
Sure, this aligns with interests, but the bug's existence is predicated on the entire code base being written with substandard style rules and no static analysis or tests, which suggests to me that incompetence got here first.
pjene··on A better way to pay workers
> The aim is to create a culture of coöperation that favors collective well-being over self-interest.

(sic)

Fascinating.

Anyway. This is collectivism .

pjene··on Ask HN: Friend wants to go 50/50 on an "app idea", how do I let him down gently?
"I am busy with other projects right now, but keep me in the loop as you make progress. Maybe write up a business plan and hire an oDesk freelancer to make a mockup/demo, and you can pitch someone for a seed investment"
pjene··on VC Compares Fight Against Inequality To Kristallnacht
No, you aren't. Nearly every commenter on the WSJ site was offended by Mr Perkins (who we hope is senile, not at evil as his words betray) and by the WSJ for printing it. It is hard to imagine that the article was printed as anything but an opportunitistic fanning of backlash against Perkins and his company, but, there is always Poe's law.
pjene··on Nvidia worker killed by Caltrain was trying to save man on tracks
It's 2014. Why don't tracks have sensors communicating with trains over radio waves?