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seangrant

215 karma · joined September 25, 2015

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seangrant··on Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut
This is something I've wondered... Do all Facebook/Google employees drink the Kool aid? Are there no privacy proponents?
seangrant··on Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users
Rule-based ad blocking limited to 30k, as stated in the article. That's why people are upset.
seangrant··on Where the Educated Millennials Congregate
Extreme moderation that makes conversation as boring as possible. That's how subreddits like /r/science stay sane.
seangrant··on Build your own IoT/MQTT node for less than $2
Because cost is prohibitive.
seangrant··on Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
How would it look if someone else got the patent and completely blocked Google? It's not even a question for large companies. The issue is this archaic patent and copyright system where someone "owns" an idea... Absurd.
seangrant··on Scammers are changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps
Never underestimate the power of fake internet points.
seangrant··on Destruction of evidence charges filed for remotely wiping iPhone
Not in America
seangrant··on A year later, Equifax has faced little fallout from losing data
It upsets me a lot how these financial institutions have complete power over us. God forbid a bank writes a loan to a scammer in your name, cause to them it's your fault. Absurd!
seangrant··on Man dies on Mount Everest during cryptocurrency promotional stunt
A consenting adult pays another consenting adult with more experience to do a life threatening task together. One dies. How is this not okay? What are you expecting? For people to never climb Mt Everest again?
seangrant··on Dealership Makes Woman Sitting Right in Front of Them Confirm She's Not a Robot
The point of the crystal clear rules is to reduce how much the human operator needs to think about what they're doing. Should you teach your workers every legal nuance they need to sell a car (and hope they follow them), or do you setup clearly defined rules that can be easily followed and repeated?
seangrant··on Snapchat’s decline and the secret joy of internet ghost towns
Snapchat is not a "dick pic network" and if you've read the article maybe you could understand how someone can have a personal connection to a website, it's users, and the culture around it.
seangrant··on Starbucks to Close All U.S. Stores for Racial-Bias Education
Why would they shut down all their locations at once, losing hundreds of thousands in income, if not for the media and social attention it would receive?

Simply put, why close business when these trainings can be done staggered or off store hours? That's my line of thinking.

seangrant··on Starbucks to Close All U.S. Stores for Racial-Bias Education
The fact that they're doing it all on one day at the same time implies it's mostly about the PR
seangrant··on Why is everyone so busy? (2014)
Sounds like your life has been gracious to give you many different experiences. I think the distaste is mostly from people who've worked their lives in an office job. Yeah it's cake, but are you gonna do it for 40 years and die happy?
seangrant··on Facebook Really Is Spying on You, Just Not Through Your Phone's Mic
The fear comes from exactly that. People aren't worried about targeted advertising. People are worried that swathes of their data isn't "theirs" anymore and can suddenly be used maliciously. Sure maybe not by Facebook. But Facebook's customers? The customers to those customers?
seangrant··on Ad campaign runs cryptocurrency miners while unwitting users watch videos
Wait, what?? I can inject my own Javascript into Google ads? How is this done?
seangrant··on Inside Amazon Go
Seattle area here. All my life I remember waiting in lines 10-20 minutes if you go to a store on a busy day (fri/sat/sun). It's just simple math sometimes where there's so many people with $400+ carts trying to check out and cashiers can only scan so fast. Everyone with medium or small sized carts have to wait in this.

I've seen great strides in recent years to advance self checkout technology and its user flow. Walmart is my favorite example of this, my local one having almost half of the area devoted to self checkout. It seems to have been successful for them so far. I don't see anyone having a hard time operate them and perhaps more surprising, it's filled me with the idea that I can pop in and out of a big store on a busy day to just buy 1 item.

seangrant··on Chat app for use when your battery is less than 5%
Costs $1 when the same can be accomplished with a native web app. Seems like a quick cash grab rather than "art" or anything.
seangrant··on Ask HN: Extremely easy steps towards extra security/privacy?
if you have an extra raspberry pi laying around you can install an ad blocker for your entire network with pi-hole.
seangrant··on The Strange Brands in Your Instagram Feed
I'm an Instagram user that genuinely enjoys clicking on a lot of ads - to buy dumb cheap stuff. Pins, clothing, general apparel gets sent to me and it's exceedingly obvious when the quality of the ads start to degrade and soon enough my feed is full of new no-name companies. They front like an established brand having only 4 products all with the same design, all with ridiculous markups.

I would love vetted ads with established companies. I really understood the longing for walking through a mall. No tricks, just here's a cool thing of mine (a serious business) please buy it.

seangrant··on Jack in the Box CEO: Swapping cashiers for robots 'makes sense' as wage increase
As soon as those computers are cheaper than human labor, of course it makes sense. I wonder what our idea of low skilled jobs will be in the coming future.
seangrant··on Bob Lutz: Kiss the good times goodbye
You think they're not working on this kind of stuff already? How many of us have an ez-pass on our car?
seangrant··on DOJ Subpoenas Twitter About Five Users Over a Smiley Emoji Tweet
Sending a tweet with intent to physically hurt someone, yes. Shouldn't it be?
seangrant··on Boston Red Sox Used Apple Watches to Steal Signs Against Yankees
Not really disingenuous when the point was he was looking at his "watch" and then calling plays. Looking at your phone every time would be an obvious tell.
seangrant··on New app scans your face and tells companies whether you’re worth hiring
My understanding is that their objection is to having a black box AI that can make or break a hire. What's to stop them from not hiring anyone because "the box said no"? What's to stop the hiring process from being entirely composed of the black box, with nobody knowing what it takes to beat? Sure you have the skills and experience, but unfortunately your facial pattern makes you seem impersonal. Don't worry, they'll keep you on file just in case.
seangrant··on What is the alt right? A linguistic data analysis of 3B Reddit comments
I stopped using Reddit because I became aware of the strong astroturfing. It is impossible to be a member of any popular open subreddit without being exposed to branding and political ideas. This extends to something like the_D where any whiff opposing ideas are insta banned. It feels like to me these subreddits curate their users to get a specific commentary going. Are they really all collected in their political agenda? I doubt it. They're simply the more vile users who agree to keep perpetuating the hate.

Multiply this to every other subreddit with heavy handed moderation, and it's no doubt that reddit is no longer a fun place to be. There is a constant struggle to control the media that is being presented to the majority unaware redditors.

seangrant··on The Year 2038 Problem
We still have plenty of time.
seangrant··on Facebook will let users livestream self-harm, leaked documents show
You're speaking like "Facebook" is its own entity. The first responders will be the friends of the victim who clicked on their video feed. How could the software itself understand what is and isn't self harm?
seangrant··on Waymo’s lawsuit against Uber is going to trial, judge rules
Are these venture capitalists even seeing a return on their money? I was under the impression that with how much Uber receives and loses, the only people gaining are paid Uber employees and riders getting discounted rides.

Where does the profit come from, and does it go to the VC investors?

seangrant··on Club Penguin is shutting down
It represents the death of the original Club Penguin though. Nowadays it's all commercials. Disney-themed penguins and adverts for the latest kids movies.
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