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pkinsky

1,233 karma · joined April 11, 2013

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pkinsky··on Coinbase Insolvent?
I moved money out of CB on the 22nd and it's in my bank account now.
pkinsky··on Salacious Convent Exposés Were the Most Popular Books in Antebellum America
It's probably important to remember that despite the anti-Catholic hysteria the Church did have a few issues. For example: http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-mass-grave-ireland-201703...
pkinsky··on Ask HN: Good hacker backpack?
TAD EDC. It's extremely overbuilt but between the integrated dry bag laptop sleeve and the MOLLE attachment points it's worth it. http://store.tripleaughtdesign.com/FAST-Pack-EDC
pkinsky··on Why Is Freedom of Speech Important?
Germany has free speech, except if you want to criticize foreign dictators [1]. I think I'll stick with our extremist variant, thanks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6hmermann_affair

pkinsky··on NeverSSL
I've always used example.com for this purpose, but this is cool. Thanks!
pkinsky··on Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
Not that I take the whole Bostrom superintelligence argument too seriously, but this is an incredibly weak argument (or more accurately, bundle of barely-related arguments thrown at a wall in the hope that some stick) against it. Feel free to skip the long digression about how nerds who think technology can make meaningful changes in a relatively short amount of time are presumptuous megalomaniacs whose ideas can safely be dismissed without consideration, it's nothing that hasn't been said before.
pkinsky··on Amazon Restaurants
I'd prefer links to stories about new ventures, their strategic impact, etc, but given that anything worth discussing usually produces multiple stories it's better that all the discussion occur on a single thread with a link to the announcement.
pkinsky··on List of spacecraft in the Culture series
The Culture themselves aren't terribly interesting. What really makes the books shine (for me) are their interactions with lower-tech societies.
pkinsky··on Yasha Levine: Interview about Tor, spies and the cult of crypto
I'm confident that heavily armed hicks trying to found some sort of confederacy 2.0 could offer at least as much resistance as the Taliban. The US government doesn't exactly have a great track record of successfully suppressing insurgencies, even without having to do it on American soil, which would increase the public relations hit for collateral damage (I imagine CNN would care more if predator drones started bombing American weddings, for example).
pkinsky··on Cognitive bias cheat sheet
Thanks for putting this together! As someone interested in cognitive biases, I wonder: how many of these effects have survived the recent replication crisis intact?
pkinsky··on Ecuador acknowledges it has "temporarily restricted" Assange's communications
Based on your inability to provide a citation my immediate assumption is that your assertion is untrue. This is generally a reasonable heuristic. If only for the sake of convincing bystanders, can you please provide a citation for this claim?
pkinsky··on Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination
There's an extension called Delayed Gratification that just introduces a 30-second delay for the initial loading of sites for which it is enabled.
pkinsky··on Blitzted: The Third Reich as a Society on Drugs
L-Theanine (amino acid found in green tea) supplements solve that problem.
pkinsky··on Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges
Right, right of course. Your totally secular belief system is what led you to a moral viewpoint in which it is immoral to rent the mouth, vagina or anus, of another human being, but (one assumes) renting their penis is totally fine.

So as a gay man, it would be highly immoral for me to have sex with a prostitute whom is a bottom, but renting the services of a top for the night would be totally fine. Am I interpreting you correctly (not that I have, or plan on, engaging the services of sex workers. Not really my scene.)?

pkinsky··on Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges
Maybe you can start purifying your soul (because clearly there's some sort of puritanical religious thing going on here) by abstaining from the use of electronic devices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan_mining_and_ethics
pkinsky··on Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges
Where would all the sex workers who disagree be without you to tell them how they really feel!
pkinsky··on Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges
If you're deliberately misinterpreting my post, we're done. If you're not, I see no point in engaging further with you.

Once again, if only for the peanut gallery: you are asserting that no sex workers have agency in the matter of their employment. Yes or no?

pkinsky··on Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges
>some of the people ignorant of the shifting nature of prostitution are actually prostitutes and prostitutors themselves

Sounds awful paternalistic. Have you considered the possibility that people who make choices you disagree with have agency?

pkinsky··on Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges
Then replace selling fruit with backbreaking manual labor: coal mining, digging ditches, whatever. Something that causes real and permanent damage to one's body over time. Is selling your labor in such a way morally wrong?
pkinsky··on Elon Musk on How to Build the Future
When you say resistance, you mean 'implementing a locally controlled version of the problematic US-controlled system they're resisting', right?
pkinsky··on 'Hide It Hillary' mobile game banned by Apple, title like 'Punch Trump' approved
That's absolutely right. I suggest a simple experiment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12420407

It should be possible to come up with ~10 'clone' games (slap trump/hillary with a fish, hit trump/hillary in the face with a pie, etc) by swapping a few assets. Phonegap could be used to deploy the same simple javascript/html5 app on android and iOS. Submit each app to Google/Apple and see what the acceptance rates look like. I would think that would be enough to confirm or disprove the existence of any bias.

pkinsky··on 'Hide It Hillary' mobile game banned by Apple, title like 'Punch Trump' approved
For those flagging this, why not try an experiment? Put together two pallette-swapped games, perhaps 'Slap Hillary with a fish' and 'Slap Trump with a fish'. Submit these games to Apple and Google for app store approval.

If you're correct in your assumption that no bias exists, either both or none will be approved. If n=2 isn't enough, this should be easy to run with greater sample size.

pkinsky··on 'Hide It Hillary' mobile game banned by Apple, title like 'Punch Trump' approved
If it were just a matter of creating two political apps, one anti-red and one anti-blue, and observing that the anti-blue one is banned, I'd agree. The article cites 3 different games focussed on simulating violence against Trump, though, which to me is enough to suggest a trend.
pkinsky··on Ask HN: How do you deal with performance anxiety during interviews?
I try to center myself. For example, I focus fully on breath for a few breaths, think 'I am breathing in, I am breathing out'. Focus on how your feet/bum/spine are supporting your weight, readjust slightly if your posture is awful. Get whatever problem you're working on out of your head.

After a few seconds of this, I come back to the problem and usually am able to do at least slightly better. It's like power cycling your brain after it gets stuck.

pkinsky··on Ask HN: Are open vacation policies a scam?
They'd probably just fire you for 'not being a culture fit' or similar.
pkinsky··on I got an ulcer working for Gawker.com. I loved every minute of it
Reminder that Gawker has a history of doxing, defaming, outing and posting explicit videos of not just the powerful but the powerless.

edit: had, not has, and doesn't it feel good to make that edit

pkinsky··on A Container Is a Function Call
I think we're getting hung up on 'function' here: the article is really about the benefits of type systems (either runtime or compile time) as applied to the argument and result types of functions. The actor implementations I've used (mostly just Akka) lack strong types, but I think treating containerized apps as actors that can only send or receive specific message types would fix the problems the article brings up.
pkinsky··on Trump’s assassination joke isn’t just a threat to Secretary Clinton
My concern is more about the many foreign civilians killed by America's drone program than any real belief that it would be used against the Jonas Brothers.
pkinsky··on Trump’s assassination joke isn’t just a threat to Secretary Clinton
I've been reading the word unprecedented a lot today. For reference, here's Obama unambiguously joking about drone-murdering the Jonas Brothers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWKG6ZmgAX4
pkinsky··on Gawker Media founder to file for personal bankruptcy
Hopefully we'll see less tabloids outing people for advertising revenue in the future.
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