Hacker News Reader

plongeuron Ask HN: What are the books that changed the perspective of your life?

I'm agnostic and I don't agree with you. Sure, there are without any doubt some wise statements to be found in the Bible.

But each and every of those thoughts have been presented and discussed in other books in a more concise, clear, less ambiguous and more applicable fashion.

Additionally, the Bible is full of rather tasteless anecdotes - judging from a modern perspective.

plongeuron U.S. Legalization of Marijuana Has Hit Mexican Cartels’ Cross-Border Trade

Few days ago I watched "The Culture High" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1778338/) which highlights the connections between:

- Prison-industry

- Militarization of Police

- Pharmaceutical industry

- and Marijuana prohibition

I highly recommend this flick. It is exceptionally well made in artistic as well as subject-specific regards.

Also watch-worthy are "How to Make Money Selling Drugs" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1276962/) which features a similar approach to the subject and "Narco Cultura" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2504022/) if you are interested in how this drug-crap even detrimentally influences what's left of Mexican culture.

plongeuron Rise of the Machines: The Future Has Lots of Robots, Few Jobs for Humans

Since the industrial revolution people work less and less ... until the 19th century for most people life mostly was about working. That's why people's last name was inferred from their profession b/c they were even identified with their jobs.

plongeuron Rise of the Machines: The Future Has Lots of Robots, Few Jobs for Humans

> Why is a job a good thing???

Most people depend on a job to structure their life. No jobs and a lot of free time would destabilize society. Which is why your government will make sure, that you do either have to or want to work. But for the majority only not-automatable work will be left. Those might be jobs that create status for the top 0.5% - they will essentially become servants - to put it mildly.

> to make sure we're not turned into serfs

A robot slave won't be as interesting as a human slave, makes sense, right?

plongeuron Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older?

For me personally this age-misconception is not what annoys me about this submit - I'm suffering from feeling-to-old since I'm 20 - I guess that's a modern issue.

I just am detested by this weird combination of bragging about where he worked, how much money and opportunities he has and everything - and still thinking he deserves warm words on HN ... and even worse - this is something the OP is (most likely not responsible for) that actually people upvote this yada yada

plongeuron Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older?

> I ask them "Do you like learning? Are you prepared to lea ...

you should have been more honest and instead asked them whether they are prepared to sit in front of a computer 95% of the time - whether they like to learn new technologies in their spare time just for the sake of staying competitive no matter if it bears real practical relevance and if they are cool with earning less than their fellow key account manager ...

plongeuron Germany's trade surplus is a problem

The US is simply not producing and exporting anything of value and able to compete with comparable products.

Furthermore not every country in EU is "suffering from Germany's export surplus" - countries like Estonia, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, ... are doing pretty well and doing better.

What countries are supposedly suffering?

- Portugal

- Italy

- Greece

- Spain

... aka the PIGS states - have a look at their economic and political history and you will notice they were all ruled by incompetent and corrupted governments.

Berlusconi is still active in policts ... do I need to say more? A lot of countries in EU have issues not due to Germany but due to their very own problems.

plongeuron Germany's trade surplus is a problem

How about visiting Germany, Belgium and France?

You will notice that in Germany there are way fewer poor people than in those other countries. The worst off people in Germany are more healthy, happy and hopeful than in the US or Belgium or France.

plongeuron What I'd tell myself about startups if I could go back 5 years

> 16. I still don't know any real investors

What is this supposed to mean?

plongeuron More scientists doubt salt is as bad for you as the government says

One cube of sugar weighs about 3g - so 24g that's 8 cubes of sugar. Unbelievable isn't it.

plongeuron More scientists doubt salt is as bad for you as the government says

Well - your gut bacteria is first and foremost dependent on your diet ... :)

plongeuron More scientists doubt salt is as bad for you as the government says

Of course "fat isn't so bad!" ... but it is, if you live off fast food like a significant part of the US population.

Also "fat <> fat" ... I eat every day at least one tablespoon of linseed oil. And that is very good for me and my brain :)

plongeuron More scientists doubt salt is as bad for you as the government says

At the end of the day it is utterly irrelevant ... the US has a major food issue, only seconded by the fat Mexicans - and salt is certainly not any major problem here. Most likely the findings simply imply that our body copes well with a bit "too much" or "too little" salt intake from nuitrition. I mean you still get plenty of "salt" from your water.

The problem is sugar, carbonhydrate-based food, red meat and fat, fat, fat - everytime I watch documentaries about the US (f.x. about the fucked up prison system) I wonder about how it is possible that almost every single police guy or warden is that fat - or the other extreme a bulk of muscles. I mean sorry - but salt - that's nothing the US has to worry about.

plongeuron Facebook use linked to depressive symptoms

To react to other people's portrayed successfulness with doubting the legitimacy or their honesty and suspecting those people to be actually unhappy is almost as immature as getting depressed by it.

plongeuron Facebook use linked to depressive symptoms

> I get depressed reading HN because a lot of the stories are about people my age who are making a lot more money than me.

I'm certainly not getting depressed from this - but I find this trend fairly annoying as well. There is fairly dominant sub-community on HN who try to communicate as often as possible how extremely smart they are and humblebrag about some start-up or how they declined an offer from Google.

But I think this sub-population is actually minority. The majority of HN readers is just curious about the subjects itself - those contribute the highest value on here in my experience.

plongeuron Facebook use linked to depressive symptoms

> As long as you have healthy relationships and meaningful activities it will never become a problem.

If someone subjectively perceives this statement to be true about her/his life - then s/he is not suffering from depression - pretty much by definition.

plongeuron Ten Years of Git: An Interview with Linus Torvalds

99% of the time I use:

- git status

- git add ...

- git reset ...

- git commit ...

- git log ...

- git push/pull ...

I guess that's "the basics" - what command should I learn next?

plongeuron Learning Haskell as a non-programmer (2014)

Okay, I'm sorry! Didn't want to make her feel bad! :)

Then again - she's already making bold statements about correct software development paradims ... I guess, some healthy humbleness may be useful if you don't want to be judged yourself.

plongeuron Ask HN: Isn't networking usually a waste of time?

Seems to me like the 80/20 paradox:

The "tangential stuff" is the essential 20% of the business that takes 80% of the effort to implement.

The stuff "the world is" is what you see and get celebrated for - which looks like 80% but takes actually only 20% of the competence and energy to realize.

This is why those talking the most - those who make the big plans and work out the "strategies" make the most money and the fastest career - but the engineers who are doing the actual work - who make those ideas real do not get much credit.

plongeuron John Oliver's Interview of Edward Snowden

That was absolutely awesome - very impressing how fast Edward Snowden adapted to John's agenda. At the same time it's sad b/c even though John Oliver is most likely sympathetic towards Edward Snowden he did a good job illustrating that the majority of the American people (and same for most populations around the world) simply do not understand the implications and the seriousness of the subject.

plongeuron Learning Haskell as a non-programmer (2014)

I think you are right - my comment is definitely a bit harsh. Certainly I don't hold a grudge against her b/c of this. But this type of over-hyped blog post fits into a weird and annoying pattern on HN as I see it. At the moment I cannot say specifically why I do react so allergic to it.

plongeuron Learning Haskell as a non-programmer (2014)

> To me, it’s a bit like saying that if you already know English, then learning a second language will be more difficult for you than if you didn’t know any language.

To master a first native language takes at least about 16 years for most people ... I think you can reasonably master a second language way faster by leveraging language analogies. I also have a very hard time believing that learning Haskell is easier if you lack programming experience in imperative languages.

> along with learning Emacs, but they are mere constituents in a continually growing pile of stuff I still need to learn.

At no point she gives a reason for why to learn Haskell in the first place. I mean you only have so much time - why spend time learning Emacs just out of nowhere?

> True Confession: I didn’t know Github existed until I started learning Haskell; I didn’t even know what version control was. So, as I was starting with Haskell, I had Linux, Git, an invitation to join an IRC channel (a wut?)

So where is her GitHub repo? Can't find the link. There is probably a lot of very smart Haskell code to be found, I guess.

> Honestly, I still don’t really understand why people like imperative and OO languages.

She writes that she has no experience in other language paradims but she does know why it's worse than functional approach? Sure ...

The only thing missing in this post is a humblebrag comment about how she just got a dev position at Google ...

plongeuron Peter Sunde: The ‘Pirate Movement’ Is Dead

As far as I observed the Pirates in Germany - they basically trolled themselves to death ... they acted disrespectful against each other - regularly crossing the border of misogyny and cyber bullying. Most of them seemed to be just angry and frustrated nerds with severe lack of social skills. Those not falling into that category - f.x. Marina Weisband - sooner or later left the party.

plongeuron Postmodern Ponzi Schemes: Empirical Analysis of High-Yield Investment Programs [pdf]

Schools need to teach elementary financial knowledge and concepts; so people learn why healthy scepticism is in order if somebody promises yields beyond inflation rate.

plongeuron Postmodern Ponzi Schemes: Empirical Analysis of High-Yield Investment Programs [pdf]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rntm3yDAQuM

He'll flip ya! It's that simple ...

plongeuron Ten Commandments of Sushi

I not just break deliberately each of those rules - I do it proudly. I take time, love high-ceiling rooms, I chit chat, I prefer it for dinner ... I even use Xylitol to sweeten the sushi rice!

plongeuron Tales from the Trenches: I was SWATed

I mean - let's be honest - there is a reason why somebody chooses to become a cop. And more often than not - this very reason isn't about "helping people". It's more likely about enjoying the exertion of power over people. There is a stronger psychological similarity between ordinary hooligans and police men than what is good. It's also always the police who will eagerly suppress people in case a state turns increasingly totalitarian - policemen don't like thinking for themselves - which is why they choose those hierarchical jobs in the first place. They like to have action and the feeling of adrenalin.

Also it's worth thinking about this - the SS in Nazi Germany was made up of about 2% of the population. Now this personality type who would do SS jobs didn't just go away - the root is of psychological nature which is most likely more or less uniformly distributed within any population. Now those guys - in that psychological, statistical sense still exist - what do you think what kind of job they will choose? Elder care? Most likely either military or police.