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rocknor

160 karma · joined November 30, 2020

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rocknor··on What can a technologist do about climate change? (2015)
That is what really matters because we can't really do much about population.

We could talk about population if we had unusually high birth rates, but that's not true. A high birth rate was the default state of all humanity pre-industrialization. Poor countries with high birth rates that plummet as they get richer is normal. A large portion of the world is still poor. Every highly developed country used to have extremely high birth rates in the past. There is nothing unusual about this, this is standard demographic transition. If you care about freedom, you can't just force poor countries to have fewer children. You have to wait for them to get richer and develop, and birth rates will drop automatically.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

rocknor··on What can a technologist do about climate change? (2015)
So? Consumption CO2 per capita is what really matters.

https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...

rocknor··on The Swiss reject key climate change measures
Nope. Look at the consumption CO2 emissions:

https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...

rocknor··on Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces
This is probably the biggest reason, they are building products used by virtually everyone on the planet, they cannot afford mistakes that could arise just because their employees only represent a small percentage of human diversity. If all diverse groups were equally well-off, or all they understood the existence and power of privilege, or there was no risk of the built products putting certain groups at a disadvantage, maybe we wouldn't need to do this. But we know that's not true.
rocknor··on Employees are quitting instead of giving up working from home
Disagree. Let's assume 25% of a graduate SV salary is $25k. That's €20k. With this salary you can only hire bottom of the barrel graduates in Portugal (cheapest country in western europe) since most graduates leave to other EU countries. With that money, in India you can get many more graduates with good English proficiency from world-class universities that are extremely hard to get into. Plus cultural barrier is overrated, if there is a barrier it's only disappearing in this internet era.
rocknor··on G7 nations committing billions more to fossil fuel than green energy
True, other large non-G7 nations like Australia and Saudi Arabia that also have very high consumption-driven emissions per capita should also be called out.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capit...

rocknor··on Employees are quitting instead of giving up working from home
This does not counter what I said in any way.
rocknor··on Employees are quitting instead of giving up working from home
This generalization that happens every time "outsourcing" and "India" get mentioned in the same thread needs to stop. The culprit here is your employer who is probably hiring graduates in India at 5-10% of SV salaries, while to get competent graduates you need like 20-25%. So you can still outsource for cheap labor, but don't make the mistake of being too cheap.
rocknor··on Employees are quitting instead of giving up working from home
Logical fallacy. The average competence of an engineer in a pool does not imply that the number of the talented devs in that pool is small. The global pool of talented devs will probably be several times the size of the US pool simply because of the world population (would be good if someone has actual numbers on this though).
rocknor··on Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English
I'm not advocating making any particular dialect universal. I'm simply asking people to look at the big picture instead of hating the person that you're talking to because of how they talk.

We have the Internet now, IMO it's only a matter of time until we naturally converge to a universal dialect. It will be a long time, but still.

rocknor··on Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English
No it's not. My point is that "do the needful" is not a proper representation of Indian English, as the parent comment implied. There are a lot more pecularities that makes the dialect what it is, but people are just not aware of them (yet). A quick google search will tell you that.
rocknor··on Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speaking English
Then you need to learn more about it, Indian English is more than just that one phrase. That's like saying, "if there is one phrase that, to me, defines American English, I think it would be "Howdy".
rocknor··on Why do we buy into the 'cult' of overwork?
> In the 1950s you could afford a nice middle class lifestyle, own a home, raise multiple children, all on a single income and no college education.

This was a unique situation, only in the US, which was a small fraction of the world population. The majority of the world was in poverty. The average human lifestyle has seen drastic improvements since then. This comment seems to suggest that things have been getting worse, but it's the exact opposite at the global level. Things have never been better.

rocknor··on Why are there so many Canadians in India?
I really hope en-IN moves to American spellings and gets rid of the lakh/crore numbers and use million/billion instead (more scientific). Then it basically becomes en-CA with nice things like ₹.
rocknor··on China’s population appears to be shrinking
Only in the short term. Lifting people from extreme poverty drastically reduces birth rates, accelerating demographic transition [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

rocknor··on China’s population appears to be shrinking
Shocking how even on HN people are not aware that the world population will NOT grow indefinitely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348

rocknor··on Soviet children’s books became collectors’ items in India
I wouldn't say there were deep ties, but there certainly were some. Only older people remember those ties now. You will find comments by such people on Youtube clips of old Hindustani songs. Not just Russia, they come from other ex-Soviet states as well. I've talked to some younger Russians, and they can sometimes recognize these tunes, but have no idea about their origin.

[1955] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW72kDrJvwA

[1955] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wjGc1zGWBc

[1955] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXxR1Fj-BQ0

[1955] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXLzfldeDcM

[1956] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwZVFw7bhos

[1975] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGYjHQbV1KE

[1982] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUdJQSUcK_Y

rocknor··on Tech Tent: Bye-bye Silicon Valley, hello global workforce?
Sounds like you're just bitter about jobs moving overseas. The global talent pool is much bigger than the SV talent pool, and no, they are not just "typists" (that was unbelievably arrogant btw and reflects ignorance). And this global talent pool is only getting bigger, thanks to the internet. It makes sense that it should be possible to hire a more skilled global workforce of engineers at a lesser cost. Companies just need to keep their hiring standards high and pay good salaries (so that skilled people choose to stay in their home countries instead of moving to SV/NY/London et al) instead of hiring bad developers and paying them peanuts for menial work.
rocknor··on Products purchased at Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged
You're on HN and it's supposed to have somewhat better discourse, don't bring the quality of this site down. Next time try googling the population (!), per capita income, rates of English profiency and technical know-how, international phone calling prices, unemployment rates of the two countries... and apply some basic statistics / common sense. There are just some of the factors, there are probably more.
rocknor··on Products purchased at Apple Store in India cannot be refunded or exchanged
Because of your stupid statement about it being ingrained in the culture. It's more like a combination of unemployment, English know-how, ineffective/overworked police because of underfunding, the existence of this attack vector and a little tech knowledge to exploit it.
rocknor··on Food waste responsible for 10% of global emissions?
Ah good one, will check it out. "Factfulness" by Hans Rosling (from the links I posted earlier) also makes the same point.
rocknor··on Food waste responsible for 10% of global emissions?
What's your point? The birth rates are already reducing. Do you want war and genocide to reduce the population faster?
rocknor··on Food waste responsible for 10% of global emissions?
Actually, it's your viewpoint that's stupid.

No one wants more humans on the planet. We only need to account for humans that are yet to be born, before we hit the peak around ~10B.

And before you start blaming countries for high birth rates (which is the typical ignorant and possibly racist viewpoint), read some books to know that birth rates have dropped drastically since WW2 due to increase in education and healthcare ACROSS THE WORLD, and they are still dropping. We have already reached peak child [1]. We will reach peak human at around ~10B according to latest reports, which is much less than what we can actually support in the future with renewable tech. So everything's mostly good, get educated.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24835822 [2] https://www.gapminder.org/

rocknor··on Food waste responsible for 10% of global emissions?
That's a dangerous anti-science viewpoint. No, the problem is the exact opposite - we as a species are not scientifically advanced enough yet to satisfy our relentless hunger for energy with renewable resources.
rocknor··on Streaming subtitled box sets is the new Eurovision
Agree with the point about quality of Netflix flicks. Most of them are cheap, cater to the lowest common denominator, optimized to maximize profit. IMO it also negatively affects society, because that's what most people consume. It's bad.

With all the content moving to streaming subscription services, the only way forward for me to not get ripped off is to buy physical copies of film/music I like (if available, pirated downloads if not) and digitally archive them.

rocknor··on Marwa Elselehdar: 'I was blamed for blocking the Suez Canal'
> If the captain was a European or American national he'd be all over the news.

Citation needed. HN is going down the drain with low quality comments like these. Identities are probably hidden to prevent Western media from spinning a bullshit narrative about how the crew nationality was a factor in the accident and get more clicks with clickbait headlines.

rocknor··on Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers
Pretty stupid thing to say. UN predicts 11B humans at peak. Certain new studies predict 9.7B. Global average birth rate is already close to replacement levels.

The earth population that can enjoy life is not fixed at 2B, that's very myopic thinking. We should fund science & tech so that it's possible for 11B people to enjoy life without damaging the planet, instead of blaming the "others" based on racist anti-science attitudes and deliberately keeping them poor by punishing them economically.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348

http://www.overpopulation.world/

https://overpopulationisamyth.com/

https://www.gapminder.org/

rocknor··on Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers
It is rightfully unpopular, because it's not based on facts. The earth could easily sustain 8B+ people if certain countries do not over-consume as they are currently. But you are right, people are selfish, especially these over-consumers.
rocknor··on Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers
What an ignorant comment. It just shows a failure of supposedly "superior" Western education, your citizens are deliberately kept uninformed in a desperate attempt to hold on to the power that was unfairly acquired by exploiting much of the world. Your arrogance just cannot bear equality, can you? The days of Western dominance are numbered, you cannot stop it. World power has been gradually shifting eastwards, rightfully. This is the Asian century.

Literally the only thing that matters is CO2 per capita. India's is way low. The low scientic output is a consequence of low per-capita income, it has been increasing and will keep increasing, will definitely cross Italy's (having lived in South Europe I know how the culture here is). It's only a matter of time. India's population has always been historically very high due to fertile lands. It would have been much lower, but 200 years of British colonialism deliberately kept Indians in poverty, keeping birth rates high. And suggesting population reduction - how exactly will you do that? Genocide? War? Try it and see how that goes.

You should focus on reducing your arrogance, racism, denial of facts, and over-consumption. You are not better than others. Learn some morals. The real solution to climate change is science & technology. Our current consumption level is just not inline with the current renewable tech.

You just want to forcefully keep the rest of the world poor so you can enjoy driving your SUVs and eating steaks, while somehow blaming the rest of the world based on some made-up metrics. Guess what that's not gonna happen. Try it if you can.

rocknor··on JavaScript from 2001 on India's largest private bank site
Yes. If you hire someone for an excessively cheap rate, it is likely that they might not perform well. For example, assume the salary of a graduate salary in bay area is $100K. You can usually hire an equally skilled graduate in India at like 1/5th price. But if you instead hire ones that are OK with 1/10 or less, you are just asking for trouble. India has a surplus of engineering graduates, even people who have no business studying engineering get an engineering degree (because let's face it, not everyone is interested in STEM) - so they perform badly as expected. But that shouldn't discount the good ones (even if 10% are good, in absolute terms that's still a big number because of the population).
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