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saturday14

65 karma · joined March 14, 2020

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saturday14··on [dead]
In all combat sports, there are weight categories. This ensures a featherweight isn't beaten up by a heavyweight. If a guy wins 100 fights straight because he is good, it is okay, because they are fair fights (assuming no doping, no biased judges etc). But in business, this is not the same - one set of rules for big businesses and billionaires and another set for small biz/startups. This is after one becomes a billionaire, which many billionaires use unethical (at best) and illegal (at worst) steps to get to.

I guess "being a billionaire" in itself is not immoral - how one gets there, and what one does to stay there is what defines how immoral the person is.

saturday14··on Show HN: I built a service to discover and monitor rapidly growing trends
Are you not breaking their ToS though?
saturday14··on Show HN: I built a service to discover and monitor rapidly growing trends
Just checked your list of products, very cool!

I've always wondered about building a career with scraping, but never got around to it. One reason is the legality of scraping - big sites like Craigslist have gone after (and shut down) smaller projects. I believe priceonomics (YC company) built a big business with scraping.

saturday14··on Show HN: I built a service to discover and monitor rapidly growing trends
Very cool. I guess as you grow, you could get more partners and the data will keep getting more and more accurate. I wish big guys like Amazon released aggregated sales data.

How do you get access to Amazon searches, google searches etc? do you have to pay for those?

saturday14··on Show HN: I built a service to discover and monitor rapidly growing trends
Is this based on Google Trends? Where is the data coming from?

Interesting project, btw

saturday14··on Masks4All: Wear a mask to stop the spread of Coronavirus (Jeremy Howard)
Until the government bans masks in public places in the interest of, you know "public safety" once the covid-19 crisis blows over.

It sucks that we even need to think about wearing masks to escape facial recognition.

saturday14··on Stacks of Urns in Wuhan Prompt New Questions of Virus’s Toll
Can't believe official numbers from governments, can't trust journalists to provide accurate accounts (either because of bias or lack of access)...

How did we reach here? This just sucks

saturday14··on Ask HN: What can we do to help during/after Covid-19?
Tristate area here, I am willing to donate time and skills as well. But this would require more than just tech skills - how are we going to find jobs for potentially a few million people fast, for example?
saturday14··on I got my file from Clearview AI
Because the general public doesn't care enough to raise a stink? Back when Snowden story broke, I tried explaining its significance to a handful of my friends - all I got was a yawn. These are not dumb people, they are smart professionals (non-IT). Even then, I failed to get the point across to them.

It would require some serious education before the public wakes up to the dangers of private companies running amok with their data. Sad thing is, it is already too late. It is going to be very difficult to put a lid on this. This is a company that we (now) know about - how many are there silently working in the shadows that we don't know about?

saturday14··on Ask HN: How are you coping with all the (mostly bad) news around you?
Yet we have panic buying of everything

Initially, I got irritated with it too. But there seems to be no hurry from the govt in creating a vaccine, testing kits aren't widely available. When they do become available, it will most likely not be free of charge. There is no clear, coherent messaging from the govt. No clear instructions other than the basic "stay home, don't shake hands". The president is trying to buy the vaccine only for his countrymen from Germany...

How hard can it be to release accurate numbers, have consistent/clear messaging on the status, on what to do and what not to do, set up testing centers for free etc?

If this is the level of response for this, what can we expect in the case of much severe scenarios like the one you describe?

People are panic buying because they don't know what else to do.

saturday14··on I made a simple infographic to track Covid-19's stats
Maybe one thing OP could do is prominently display the last updated time, instead of saying "updated three times a day". Though he/she does display the time period at the top.

But generally this is good advice - not add to the noise already there on the internet, even though OP's intentions are likely honest and they are just trying to help.

saturday14··on USA tried to pay Germans so coronavirus cure vaccine would be exclusive to USA
Publish the emails, the phone calls, sanction us, go to the press

Agree with the rest, but sanctions don't hurt the people who actually came up with this shitty idea. It ends up hurting the normal guy on the road, who will probably not endorse the idea in the first place.

saturday14··on Germany tries to stop U.S. from luring away firm seeking coronavirus vaccine
The very fact that we are discussing this is super silly and shitty. The whole world should be working together, not competing with each other and not trying to screw each other over.
saturday14··on Gambas: Visual Basic on Linux
Could you please talk about what kind of projects you are using it for? Do you use it for serious projects or just toy ones? Web or mobile?

I looked at the site, this sounds interesting. Just interested in hearing it from someone who uses it