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simplemen

79 karma · joined January 12, 2021

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simplemen··on Justice Department Drops Yale University Admissions Lawsuit
I am assuming you don't have any kids. I used to think same way and so did most of my Asian friends. Hey I am doing fine, I end up going to decent college, other Asians can do same, right?

But it slowly changed when my friends and I started to have kids. When your kid get A but you know it is not enough. Even if you try to protect your kid, family and others tell your kid that they need to join more clubs and volunteer if they want to go to a good school. When your kid replies why and says my friends are not doing it, and you need to tell them that his friends have a different skin color and they will get preferred treatment, that's when you realize how wrong it is.

Just because there are institutions in our society which discriminate aganist one group, the solution is not to ask other institutes to discriminate against a different group. We need to get rid of discrimination in all parts of our society and not increase it.

Edit: anthoner unintended side effect of this is that many of extremely liberal Indian families that had many Black and Hispanic friends are now hanging out less with them. Because they want their kids to be friends with those who will be doing same activities.

simplemen··on How to Lose Money
Seems like in all these methods, you need to be in top 10% or top 1% to make money.
simplemen··on Justice Department Drops Yale University Admissions Lawsuit
This is sad. I knew several Asian Indians who claimed that they were mixed race to get into college. Because if they didn't, they won't get in while they all had 4.0 gpas. They just didn't completely kill their social life, they didn't join multiple clubs or volunteered every weekend. It is disheartening to see young kids in one ethnic group needing to work so much harder while other ethnic groups have lower standards of admission.
simplemen··on What Did We Lose When We Lost the Stars?
Why?

What should we care about then? Is pollution worse than COVID19? Human trafficking?

There are so many problems in this world, we need different people working on different problems.

simplemen··on Losing faith in UX
I have worked for 5 companies in my 15 years career. One of that company was ecommerce consulting firm which dealt with a lot of mom-n-pop ecommerce stores. Let me tell you not a single one of them was willing to give up any dark patterns if that meant losing revenues. Unless you are working on non-revenue generating product like internal dashboard, it is all about get sales anyway possible.

I am sure there are ethical companies, I see many of them mentioned here, started by readers of this forum, but what percentage are those. Imo, they are less than 1%.

simplemen··on Ask HN: What Are the Alternatives to Robinhood?
Fidelity, I daytraded GME today without any issues. I also have accounts with Tastyworks and Think or Swim. Tastyworks sent email that their clearinghouse had blocked certain stocks but ToS didn't sent any email. So assuming ToS is also safe to use for high risk trading.
simplemen··on Ask HN: What Are the Alternatives to Robinhood?
Why is this downvoted? This true and I would not trust IB. My friend had been trying convince me to come to IB but now he is moving to Fidelity.
simplemen··on YC-backed Alpaca Trading blocks buy orders on popular stocks
A lot of broker restricted and then rolled back. Some brokers like Tastyworks said it wasn't their choice but their clearing house was restricting.

The damage is done already and no granutee that this won't happen again.

simplemen··on Losing faith in UX
Where are they going to go? Every company is using dark patterns. Maybe there are a few small ethical companies but that is very small number.
simplemen··on GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine
At this point, no broker is lending gme to retail investors. However, if you are market maker, you should be able to short it still.
simplemen··on Tell HN: Someone seems to be trying to make people more fearful through YouTube
Is it just me or do others also feel raised blood pressure, tingling in forearms, and other physical symptoms after watching violent videos?

These disturbing videos can kill my productivity for hours.

simplemen··on I used to build stuff all the time, then I got a job
How would you get started? And did you turn it into your fulltime job?
simplemen··on Ask HN: What field has the most objective, quantitative evaluation of skill?
Not sure why you are being downvoted, trading is very objective indeed.
simplemen··on Ask HN: What is your low stress, high paid job?
I used to feel same way. If I didn't produce 8 hours of code then I felt guilty. If I got stuck on problem for 8 hours then I felt guilty.

It took some time but now I realize that it is not code lines per hour that they hire me for but for my knowledge and experience. It is my ability to estimate work and deliver project on time. Also in knowledge professions, you are always thinking of the work even if not actively doung it.

simplemen··on How do you deal with mental switching between projects/clients/areas?
It is costly to switch context. I try to avoid it unless my boss directly asks me to. Even then, I try to wait until next day to do so.
simplemen··on Ask HN: Are there any devs that do also self-hosting of services?
I know a few devs who are hosting opensource alternatives of popular service like Dropbox. Other more extreme are hosting their own dns on pi-hole, email servers, etc.
simplemen··on Ask HN: What is the cost to launch a SaaS business MVP
If founders got dev and design skills, then this will work. Add in a few thousand dollars for marketing if you want a successful launch.
simplemen··on Ask HN: What is your low stress, high paid job?
I am a software engineer at failing fortune 500 tech giant. Managers like to create artificial deadlines but other than that there is no real stress. If service goes down and I am not near computer, no big deal, we don't have a lot of customers. But in my case I am also kind of checked out at work, so dgaf.
simplemen··on r/wallstreetbets set to private after increased media coverage
Same here. Pretty easy to follow their popular picks and make real money.
simplemen··on Ask HN: Which camera do you own? Do you like it?
Fuji X100f.

Love it, mostly because I learned photography on manual film cameras and this camera gives me that nostalgic feelings. Besides it looks cool and it is a good conversation starter with strangers.

Image quality may not be the best though.

simplemen··on Body on a 3-day fast: Real-time data with Basis
Is this Basis same as Basis watch?
simplemen··on Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets
Fat shaming is brutal in Asian countries. If one is fat, they will be bullied or they will need to be bully. I know a Pakistani American obese woman who went to Pakistan for a wedding. Every kid in the neighborhood was calling "moti" auntie which is equalant of fatty.

I work with a lot of Indians and they will randomly point out that you have gained weight.

simplemen··on A Nepali team has made the first winter ascent of K2
Bought one off amazon for $25. Not the fanciest. Need to shut it off at valve after using it. It is not designed to be undwr pressure. But it has been working for 8 years. Don't waste your money on $300 bidet, it is just a hose.
simplemen··on Ask HN: What good or service had unusual price changes during the pandemic?
Pools. Trying to get and contractors are not even willing to work on one unless at 75k in my area
simplemen··on Why cancer cells waste so much energy
He wasn't fasting, he was on fruits diet.
simplemen··on Ask HN: Hiring “Jesus lovers” for your tech/science startup
Is believe in science also not a religion?

But besides that I have met some amazing geeks who are religious nuts too. Most don't talk about their religion at work. But some can get annoying.

This one guy would use weird jesus love us language during outage. It drove every focused on troubleshooting mad. Another guy decided he will convert me to Christianity. Loved long discussions with him. I might have turned a bit atheist though. But he started it. Atheism is also a religion in my view.

Another person I worked with turned out be extremely religious and racist on twitter. He was nicest guy at work. But once I saw his Twitter, I just felt repulsed by him especially racism. He quit eventually to start his own bible startup.

These are just extreme examples, most religious people never mentioned religion until I became their friends on facebook and saw they were Jesus lovers

simplemen··on What's your biggest regret as developer/programmer?
Starting projects and then abandoning them.

1. Started a niche dating site in early 2000s. Got traction but too many rude assholes. Got tired of dealing with it and shutdown it.

2. Started better looking Craig's list in late 2000s. Got no traction but should have left it online.

3. Started a fitness gadget blog reviewing fitness gadgets. Got some traffic but not technical enough and kind of boring. So stopped. Now i see dcrainmaker and wish i didn't stop.

Countless more ideas that never left my localhost.

simplemen··on Feds asks Tesla to recall vehicles over failing touchscreen displays
I love my Outback but Mazda looks like a strong contender for my next car.
simplemen··on Feds asks Tesla to recall vehicles over failing touchscreen displays
Back in old days, I could send text messages with phone in my pocket. In my car, I can control all analog knobs without taking my eyes off the road but still need to look at touchscreen for a few interactions.
simplemen··on Workaholism leads to health problems, work addiction risk depends on occupation
Yeah but you can change jobs and find better work with less fires far easier than changing your personal life.
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