HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

scott_paul

94 karma · joined August 23, 2015

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/scott_paul; my proof: https://keybase.io/scott_paul/sigs/s1RR8N7676IumpU6tk0YwTyYJILeehXtHZ9lXNT75xU ]
submissionscomments
scott_paul··on Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control
I disagree with almost all of your political opinions, and some of your positions I very much hate. But we should be free to have the argument, without the thread of handcuffs or the threat of starvation. Although I use my real name here, sometimes I prefer not to, and that should be allowed.

The right to actual real privacy is the same thing as the right to actual real freedom of speech, and we should harm anyone who is trying to take that most basic foundation of all rights away.

I agree with Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

scott_paul··on Adolescent boys struggle with disorganization and distraction
20 years ago boredom wasn't a thing and we weren't addicted to screens? No, no. This dopamine-addiction screentime crap has been a thing for several generations. It's what fucked up the Boomers, I think, and it was definitely a thing for gen-X'ers like me.

This isn't some new thing that just happened to the kids these days, it's a longer term trend that everyone talking here grew up with, and we should examine it as such.

scott_paul··on Adolescent boys struggle with disorganization and distraction
That's a feature not a bug.

A few thousand years ago we used to literally set them loose in the wilderness with some wolves for a few years, and it was fun & educational.

We understand reason and organization because we have explored the chaos, in our youth. It is necessary to explore the chaos, in order to fully grow into a fully functioning adult human man.

You don't get wise men from boring kids.

scott_paul··on New Tolkien book, The Fall of Númenor, to be published
Yeah, sounds like it's just a rehash / re-compilation of Christopher Tolkien's work. I'll pass.
scott_paul··on Simple, Cheap and Portable: A Filter-Free Desalination System
The claim is "filter-free", but the device also uses an "electromembrane". So... how is that not a filter? Because it's electrified?

The selling point of this device is that it doesn't need filter changes in the field. Okay. So, how many liters of seawater can in process before it needs an "electromembrane" change?

It's not my field of expertise, maybe I'm just really missing something obvious. Or maybe it's hype and BS tarnishing an otherwise good advancement. Can't tell.

scott_paul··on AltWinDirStat
Anyone else amused just reading the commit comments?
scott_paul··on We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA
Well, for starters Gab is banned from the App Store for their near-absolutist stance on free speech.

More than that is the general culture of suppression of the "wrong" view of reality. Most people who were merely to the right of center moderates in the 00's are now accused of being absolute evil if they voice any opinions. I've been told by well more than a dozen former co-workers that they're afraid to say anything or let anyone at work find out about their political opinions because they're afraid of getting fired & won't be able to feed their families. The suppression and censorship is very real.

One or two exceptional counterexamples do more to prove the rule than to disprove it.

scott_paul··on Gut microbe linked to depression in large health study
I use a variant of Emmymade's variant of Maangchi's recipe. It works really well.

Rinsed pickle jars work great, a head of Napa cabbage usually fills about 2+1/2 ~ 3 jars. If you're not into high spicy, dial back the red pepper by about half, for your first try. If you don't like funky, skip the fish sauce or any seafood component, I always do this so that the flavor won't clash with some dishes, you can always add fish sauce to a dish but you can't remove it.

I ferment it for about 3 days at about 65 ~ 68 degrees(f), then into the fridge. It keeps indefinitely but is best within a few months.

Do not bring it into work, just as you would not microwave fish at work. The aroma is very much not to everyone's preference, even when made without seafood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaoA7SKN0g0 https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/easy-kimchi

scott_paul··on Git Commands Explained with Cats (2017)
I showed this to a non technical guy who is trying to learn git. He said he liked the cats but this didn't help him understand it any better.
scott_paul··on Nanofiber membrane makes seawater drinkable in minutes
Article is gibberish. Link to the actual study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03767...
scott_paul··on The First Randomized Controlled Trial on Vitamin D and Covid-19
Anyone else notice that Calcifediol is the most expensive vitamin-D analogue on the market? What a huge surprise that the study chose that form of vitamin-D specifically.
scott_paul··on Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study
I'm not commenting on how anyone else does it, or saying that there aren't bad patterns out there. I'm telling the room about a strategy I found that lets me twist the bad into good.
scott_paul··on Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study
When I interview a candidate, I'm explicitly and intentionally looking at how they respond to stress, how (if) they're able to say "I don't know", and how they communicate complicated ideas. I open with soft-balls to put them at ease and get them opened up and talking. Then dive deeper into technical things. All the questions are technical, but the main answer I get is how they communicate, how they relate to people, and how they deal with the unknown.

If you understand that a technical interview assesses anxiety, and you roll that into the plan, if you know what the game is, then you're 1/2 way to a win-win already.

scott_paul··on U.S. backs down in fight with Harvard, MIT over student visas
It's just red meat for the base. The administration doesn't actually want to restrict immigration, they just know that they were hired to restrict immigration, so they have to appear to be working on that. Notice that every single time they've done any kind of immigration restriction, they either walk it back within 72 hours, or allow themselves to be stopped in court. It's all just a sham for the voters in an election year.
scott_paul··on I Know What You Download on BitTorrent
This mostly shows me what other customers of my VPN in various countries like to download.
scott_paul··on Welcome to America’s Cultural Revolution
Ah well WP is WordPress, of course. Truly an evil thing that we must all apologize for, forever, or until it's perfectly bug-free.

As for lolcow, you'll be more entertained if you google it than if anyone explains it to you.

scott_paul··on Animals killed since opening this page
Yes, humans eat animals. "Top of the food chain" means something. It means lunch. Delicious lunch.

Oh man, now I want a chicken sandwich with bacon on it.

scott_paul··on Signaling as a Service
The projection in this article is strong. This is the product of a very alien mind, to me. Intentional signaling is irritating to others, and often self-destructive. I really doubt most people's actions are driven by signaling, except in particularly mentally ill clumps of humanity.

In other words: what do you mean "we", weirdo?

scott_paul··on Ask HN: How do we stop the polarization/toxicicity filling the web?
It's worse than the Eternal September. It's definitely more toxic than it's ever been, and people are definitely more polarized. The 2016 election news cycle got a lot of otherwise normal people really radicalized and hostile. Sure most of the old-timers among us remember, often fondly, the constructive insanity of usenet. And the younger generation remembers the torrent of pure id that was 4chan in the early days, and 8chan later.

Here's the thing. It's leaking. This stuff used to be contained, kept in a little secret segmented-off piece of your world that was 'the internet'. Now it's invading your real life, your real-world friendships, your workplace, even your family.

Think of the Greater Internet F-ckwad Theory: "Normal Person + Anonymity + an Audience => Total F-ckwad". Now run that function over the entire populace, map/reduce style. Now take that F-ckwad, and remove the Anonymity by requiring them to use their real name. And bingo, now you live in Interesting Times.

scott_paul··on Every Google result now looks like an ad
And yet, they are observably evil.
scott_paul··on Slack’s new WYSIWYG input box is terrible
Your user experience has been "enhanced".

Share and Enjoy.

scott_paul··on Meritocracy harms everyone, even the winners
If the combination of high intelligence and high drive generally leads to gaining more wealth, and if those qualities are generally highly heritable, then we should expect rich kids to, on average, inherit their parents' intelligence and drive, and so do well in things that require intelligence and drive, such as school & work.

But that leads to other uncomfortable questions, that we'd all rather not discuss. And so, we desperately search for other answers.

scott_paul··on US Law Enforcement Traces Bitcoin Transfers to Nab ‘Largest’ Child Porn Site
It remains to be seen if the methods used by monero, dash, and various zk-proof based coins are enough to prevent de-anonymization when a motivated state actor is involved.

Gotta say though, this is one of the few times I'm glad to see someone too stupid to use proper anonymization tools.

scott_paul··on The Library Card Project: The Ease of Forming Anonymous Companies in the U.S.
I increasingly think the US should look into adopting something akin to Estonia's voting system. Perhaps with some added zero-knowledge proof layer so that it can be known that all votes were valid, but not exactly who voted which way.

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