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3,253 karma · joined March 15, 2008

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raquo··on ADS-B Exchange – Co-op of unfiltered flight data
You don't need to be a high level executive to not want to broadcast your location and identity in realtime for anyone to see.

This isn't about your choices with mobile devices, this is mandated by the government, and the broadcasted data is literally open to anyone.

raquo··on Signal is finally bringing its secure messaging to the masses
And the founder of whatsapp is bitter about what Facebook did to it, and is funding signal now. And Moxie is no fan of Facebook either. These aren't some random kids and a VC.
raquo··on Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety
That does not seem to account for most political and social issues that you can't do much for alone, but millions of people together can bring positive change with little individual effort.
raquo··on ICANN Allows .COM Price Increases, Gets More Money
If we really want higher prices, how about we at least get more features for it. Such as built-in privacy protection.

Or how about we restructure the whole relationship so that wildly excessive amounts of money don't end up in either Verisign or ICANN regardless of what the price is.

raquo··on Firefox Preview adds support for recommended extensions, including uBlock Origin
The current situation is sustained by a small minority of users generating the majority of the clicks. That was true before adblock became a thing too. As long as adblock is not pre-installed with any major browser, it won't reach 90% penetration, and these people will by and large continue generating clicks.

So, the effects might be less dramatic than we'd expect. The industry will adapt one way or another, not the first time a technological shift like this happens. Who knows, maybe we'll even get functional micropayments out of this. One thing that will definitely happen that you didn't mention is disguising advertisements as organic content. It's already happening with instagram influencers and even newspapers publishing sponsored content.

raquo··on The Road to Scala 3
> What part of ruby or java has anything morally or technically even approaching the concept, use case, or meaning of implicits?

Dependency injection for implicit params, for one? Also, you can almost see implicit conversions as one take on type safe dynamic typing. Almost.

But of course Scala also brings functional programming and its own ideas to the mix.

raquo··on The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers (2015)
Scala's version is epoch.major.minor, not major.minor.patch. I though 2.12.(x+1) is generally binary compatible with 2.12.x. Or at least I personally never ran into that issue with Scala itself.
raquo··on Ask HN: Someone posted an my passport on Facebook. Anything I can do?
Is there an equivalent to "small claims court" in Colombia where you don't need a lawyer if you're willing to do your own research? Maybe threaten to take them to that court for disclosing private information without permission, and also for libel if they accompanied the photo with untruthful badmouthing. And then take them to that court if they ignore you? IANAL though, and I know nothing about what's legal or not in Colombia.

One other thing you can try is get more people to report that post. Maybe there's a threshold at which they will look into this more seriously.

raquo··on Aviation Is on a Low-Carbon Flight Path
Hey, nice! What kind of components are you using? Engine, batteries, etc.? Did you pick those yourself, or borrow the design from an existing system like the e-help for hang gliders?
raquo··on Goodyear Inflatoplane
I would say ram-air inflation of parafoil wings is very different – it's dynamic, not static like a bladder pre-inflated with a pump.

This Inflatoplane is more of a precursor to modern "tensairity" designs (e.g. some of Prospective Concepts designs). While certainly interesting, pressurized bladders in aircraft have so far been a dead end due to practical limitations (catastrophic modes of failure, wear, altitude pressure differences IIRC). The only flying wings where inflatable bladders are successfully used are kitesurfing kites. But those don't normally carry people up high.

Parafoil based designs on the other hand are now everywhere. Paragliders, parachutes, parafoil kitesurfing kites, even parafoil sails (SkySails).

raquo··on Goodyear Inflatoplane
Powered paragliders fit the bill, but still require infrastructure like some open space for launching / landing.
raquo··on Hong Kong can be a gateway to liberal values for China
The sanctions came from liberal nations, to state the obvious. An external enemy, as far as Russians are concerned. The same countries never sanctioned USA over any of its similarly unjustified wars or the coup d'etat-s it organized. It's a matter of power relative to other nations, not the level of democracy in the aggressor.

Again, I'm not defending Crimea invasion by any means, but the original question is why do people accept autocracy, and the answer lies in their perception as much as actual truth, neither of which should be ignored.

raquo··on Hong Kong can be a gateway to liberal values for China
> Russia's liberty deprivation is beginning to show itself - again - in their economic regression (eg falling incomes for 5-6 years) and general stagnation.

Let's be fair, the last few years recession in Russia was largely, if not entirely, caused by post-Crimea sanctions and crashed global oil prices, it had little if anything to do with liberty deprivation.

As to the general point, nobody in Russia knows or cares how well off an average American is. People care how well off they are relative to their own yesterday. Russians know they have it better today than in the 90s, and they (think they) know whom to thank for that. I guess same goes for Chinese as their economy has been growing wildly at the time, although I have no personal experience there.

To be extra clear, this does not mean at all that autocracy contributed to that growth in any positive way – most probably the opposite, – only that it appears so from the inside, as without freedom of speech it is very easy for the regime to take credit for any improvements and blame the west for any setbacks. Russia excels at that game domestically, which explains why Russians are largely fine with the relatively small amount of freedoms they're enjoying. Again, probably a similar situation in China.

(I didn't downvote you, just wanted to expand on GP's point)

raquo··on Ask HN: Do you reuse components from your previous projects?
I make (web app) components with only minimal regard for cross project reusability. I don't add any features to them that I don't need for the current project, but I do try to keep them small and decoupled.

I find that liberal use of copy-paste _across projects_ is way cheaper than building up a library of well thought out, generic components even in the long term.

If you have ten concurrent projects that need the same components at the same time it could make sense to build them up as privately published libraries. Otherwise it's unlikely that the overhead and rigidity of that approach will pay off if you only have one or two projects that you're actively working on at any given time.

raquo··on China’s assault on Cathay Pacific
Your apparent judgement is that the pilots taking part in protests and talking about protests to passengers are a safety issue. Otherwise, nothing you said makes sense.

This is the Economist sentence that you're commenting on:

> When the Chinese aviation authority, absurdly, accused the airline of imperilling safety because its employees had joined the protests

If you didn't believe that pilot protests / speech is a safety concern, you wouldn't disagree at the use of "absurdly" in that sentence, and then wouldn't double down on that by giving an example of an incident which you think imperiled safety.

Otherwise, if you didn't agree with those fake safety concerns, there is nothing surprising about the usage of "absurd" by the Economist.

raquo··on China’s assault on Cathay Pacific
Speaking over the intercom about protestors is not a safety issue. You don't need the obviously politically motivated CCP "experts" to judge that. This has nothing to do with aviation safety and everything to do with (lack of) freedom of speech.

You have some anonymous user in this thread fantasizing about crazy scenarios that didn't happen, and you're propping them up with your own judgement, and then you're telling me to hold my judgement and trust the alleged "experts" that happen to agree with you.

No thanks, I'll take as much freedom in judgement as you afforded yourself.

raquo··on China’s assault on Cathay Pacific
The pilot talking about protestors at the airport he's landing, and supporting them did not imperil the safety of passengers. Claiming that is indeed absurd.
raquo··on We Created a Planning Diary Making $160K in 6 Months
Yes well everyone has a different idea of what to include in the costs, that's all fluffy and can be twisted to suit whatever result one wants.

Which is why some people choose moral principles that are more rigid. And well scamming people into buying useless rocks is on the wrong side of mine, no matter what moral kickback it's artificially bundled with.

raquo··on We Created a Planning Diary Making $160K in 6 Months
So you take into account the positive effects of mental health donations but not the negative effects of the promotion of healing crystals. No shit you'll come out ahead.

Promoting bullshit has real costs associated with it. Those bullshit crystals cost people money and don't do anything. People get dumber being convinced to buy them, and will use that dumbness in other parts of life. Promoting a market for delusion and false hope is the last thing anyone needs.

It might be hard to put a precise dollar value on second order effects like these, let alone on things like moral integrity, but that doesn't mean this value isn't there.

There is no shortage of people who will do whatever bullshitting it takes to earn more money, and that's not something to be celebrated regardless of whether it comes with mental health donations or another trendy atonement mechanism.

raquo··on Off-Facebook Activity
If you don't have a facebook account, facebook likely has a shadow profile for you. Which would carry your phone number, full name, and whatever else they could extract from your friends' phonebooks and whatever other sources they use. There is no opting out of that, and there is no opting out of facebook getting third party data that lets them connect your shadow profile to a cookie, or to information collected by third parties.
raquo··on ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully
He was convicted of attempted murder while he was very well alive. He was also charged for many other crimes for two decades, the charges just never stuck because he intimidated the witnesses. Plenty of information about his deeds was recorded prior to his killing.
raquo··on Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
> Are you suggesting that there is a cutoff below which differences in income don't affect where people decide to live?

Of course there is, for plenty of reasons:

- Moving away from friends and family is not free, is risky financially (what if your new job does not pan out), and is often simply not something people want

- Population-wide differences do not guarantee that you personally will gain anything by moving (correlation vs causation)

- Small differences in average incomes are imperceptible to most people, and the quality of average person's financial analysis is lacking. For example, looking at just median income ignores differences in cost of living, quality of government services, lifestyle, and anything occupation-specific.

- There is often more variation in median income within a state (e.g. urban vs rural areas) than across states. Migration from rural to urban areas is a thing.

- etc.

raquo··on 13-Year-Old Scientist's Research Shows Hand Dryers Can Hurt Kids' Ears
If your question is how to fix negative externalities, the answer is "regulation".

Otherwise... you can't make people care about every little thing in their lives. Sure we can solve this hand dryer problem with an awareness campaign or microdonations or whatever. But what do we do for the other hundred thousand issues like this?

Nobody has that much attention to spare on non crucial things. That's why we elect people to make these decisions for us.

Many things are going to suck as long as our elections remain broken. That is a much harder problem to fix, but there is no way around it.

Unregulated markets, no matter how innovative, do not always produce perfect outcomes. Basic conditions for and solutions to market failure have been known for more than a hundred years. It's not rocket science.

raquo··on Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives
My comment is a critique of the content of his article, not an "opinion of what he supposedly thinks" in need of his recognition.

If "thinking that" are trigger words now, replace it with "acting as if" to same effect.

raquo··on Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives
That article comes so close to defeating its own argument it's painful. If that land wasn't protected with zoning, it would have been built up long ago into a typical sprawling suburbia – the opposite of what they propose. So if it had been unprotected in the past, that would have been bad. And if it stays protected that's bad because it's underused.

It is only this short sliver of time that is today that this land should be developed into their dream city. That will somehow miraculously withstand the test of time.

No, it won't, that's just greed and narcissism – thinking that we're so special today that we deserve to have that land unprotected for us but doing that for either future or past generations is a mistake.

raquo··on Stricken Russian Nuke Sub Crew Prevented ‘Planetary Catastrophe’
Russia still has military draft. Gotta do something with all that free labour. They do however also have actual professional soldiers, and lots of them. Those should be more trained / competent.
raquo··on A live map of marine traffic
I think it's just delayed to make this free preview useless for most commercial applications. They sell this data after all.
raquo··on Facebook’s New Cryptocurrency Gets Big Backers
Why does this centralized stablecoin need to be crypto? It's not like they need to raise funding for this.

They could have made their own boring but extremely well positioned WePay / Paypal alternative ages ago, and instead they waited until cryptocurrencies are past peak hype to launch this. Puzzling.

I guess the only thing they have to sell here is the privacy aspect of crypto, but I doubt you'll get effective privacy from Facebook on any Facebook platform, crypto or not.

raquo··on Ask HN: Startup needs suggestion on business process automation
Zapier comes to mind for one. What kind of triggers would you want?
raquo··on Use links not keys to represent relationships in APIs
That only works if fetching the /people/123 URL is the only thing you will ever do. If you need the real 123 entity id in any other context, e.g. to display it to the user, or to make a user-accessible website link to that entity (e.g. "view this transaction in stripe dashboard"), you'll need parsing.

I also mentioned that I don't want to store redundant garbage in my logs and database, especially if I want to index the column containing that entity id.

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