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smashthepants

49 karma · joined August 7, 2019

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smashthepants··on Show HN: Plaiceholder, transform images into pure CSS blurred placeholders
I don't understand what it's for.
smashthepants··on Show HN: GPT-3 Powered Content Marketing Automation
The landing page mentions blogs once, but gives no examples and blog posts aren't listed on the pricing page. Can it generate blog posts? If so, what's that experience like?
smashthepants··on Show HN: Balto – Get 10-min phone calls from a trained coach to stay accountable
Who are the coaches? What are their backgrounds/experience? Do we get to choose our own coach?
smashthepants··on Show HN: Pixlet – Build apps for highly-constrained displays with Starlark
Yep pixlet is very cool, but I want a Tidbyt :) I'll sign up for the newsletter and wait for your announcement
smashthepants··on Show HN: Pixlet – Build apps for highly-constrained displays with Starlark
What's the pricing on a Tidbyt?
smashthepants··on Show HN: Topical JavaScript Challenges
It would be good to see some example challenges and the format of the challenges
smashthepants··on Katherine Johnson, NASA mathematician, has died at 101
Your conclusion is wrong - she admits in the quote you referenced that segregation was there. She does not say it didn't affect her, she says she didn't feel it (as in let it affect her own behavior, cloud her mind, react to it, etc).

To my recollection (I could be wrong it's been years), the movie didn't focus on her feelings about segregation, it focused on the actual segregation and the effects of that segregation on her daily life (i.e. obstacles that would have been in her way), which is distinctly different from her feelings about said segregation and obstacles...which is what she's referring to in the quote.

The book actually touches on this:

"She knew just as well as any other black person the tax levied upon them because of their color. But she didn’t feel it in the same way. She wished it away, willed it out of existence inasmuch as her daily life was concerned.”

MANY members of different marginalized groups deliberately choose this outlook as a method of self preservation in an attempt to minimize the very real emotional, physical, and spiritual toll created by these -isms. Quite a bit of research on the topic if it's something that interests you. But their choice not to acknowledge the source of these obstacles (i.e. racism) doesn't mean it's not there and it doesn't mean there aren't significant challenges...

smashthepants··on Is Inequality Inevitable?
You're assuming a world without inheritance, nepotism, politics, lobbying, etc. So many factors go into how much a person's effort can compound....
smashthepants··on Is Inequality Inevitable?
How are we defining production? They say Bezos makes $215M per day. Does he personally produce $215M in 'value' per day? Or do his employees contribute to it?
smashthepants··on Show HN: A Privacy-Focused, Customizable Commenting Plugin
Maximum comments on the free plan - is that 200 per page? Or 200 per site? Also is it 200 in total? Or 200 over some time period?

Also, is there a blurb about privacy or how this enables privacy focus over other commenting plugins? I didn't see anything on the landing page...

smashthepants··on Show HN: Dissoc, a simple Reddit like site without voting system
From the show HN rules linked at the very top of the page:

In Comments

Be respectful. Anyone sharing work is making a contribution, however modest.

Ask questions out of curiosity. Don't cross-examine.

Instead of "you're doing it wrong", suggest alternatives. When someone is learning, help them learn more.

When something isn't good, you needn't pretend that it is. But don't be gratuitously negative.

smashthepants··on N8n.io – Workflow automation alternative to Zapier
Fair points. And it gives me a little more context into the intensity of the reactions. Thank you.
smashthepants··on N8n.io – Workflow automation alternative to Zapier
Well...characterizing the usage as a marketing term wouldn't be relevant if the potential for making money weren't an issue here.

Even beyond that, on a human level, the attacks on an individual trying to make a living seem unnecessarily harsh. My critique is mostly about the spirit of the negative comments (not just yours, sorry), which all seem to assume malice where there likely is none. I.e. several comments here and on the github repo calling the developer a liar and coward, etc (again, not you, this just happened to be the comment I replied to)

And I think this entire discussion proves that the definition of 'open source' is not as cut and dry as some people would like. And because of that, saying 'just be honest' when someone uses one of the alternative definitions of the term seems unfair.

I've always thought that the terms FOSS exists specifically to provide some extra clarity in this regard...

And I don't know what you'd call this other than "open source" because I haven't heard the term "source available" until today, and I would have had no idea what it meant if that's what the developer had used....

smashthepants··on N8n.io – Workflow automation alternative to Zapier
Windows isn't free. Nor is the source available to be viewed, modified, extended, learned from, etc. Also, you're comparing one of the biggest tech companies in the world, to an individual who is trying to make a living. This is an unfair characterization on every level.
smashthepants··on N8n.io – Workflow automation alternative to Zapier
The words 'community' and 'customers' are not mutually exclusive and using the word community to refer to your customers is not misleading in the slightest...
smashthepants··on Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process
The problems were created by giving preferential treatment based on race, but the solution is to ignore race?

No one is advocating wishing anything away. If you want to focus specifically on equality of opportunity you can't do so without recognizing that race directly affects which opportunities are available to whom. Any solution that ignores that is just more of the same. And doing more of the same only extends the timeline of "when" that the original comment took issue with.

smashthepants··on Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process
He explicitly said income equality is unachievable. I didn't put those words in his mouth.

You can't answer the question of "when" if a person has already decided the goal is unachievable. Again, those were his words not mine

The temporary measures will end WHEN people are genuinely interested enough to help regardless of whether they created the problem. That is my answer. You just don't like it. And that's ok....

smashthepants··on Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process
Ummm...because historical discrimination has led to an environment where educational resources are unequally distributed? The effects of those historical policies still exist...and they should therefore be taken into account today...since they still exist...the effects...
smashthepants··on Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process
Income inequality is only "unachievable" exactly because of thinking like this. If people were genuinely invested in equality they would be asking "what can i do to get us there faster?" instead of being defeatist and calling it unachievable because you didn't personally create the problem.
smashthepants··on Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process
There are so many studies on this if you're actually interested.

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

Regardless of whether family wealth is lost over time, non-black families still hold more wealth than black families by several multiples.

smashthepants··on Show HN: Picture-in-picture (PIP) for Windows 10
Sounds cool. Screenshots of the app being used would be nice.
smashthepants··on Show HN: I made a platform that automates financial wellness
You would get a lot more feedback if the landing page described the product a bit more - specifically what you're doing, how you're doing it, and why I'd want it...
smashthepants··on Show HN: A platform to share your side project
The readme says that 'for profit' projects aren't allowed. Side projects can't be created for the purpose of making money? I'm not sure I understand the purpose of that restriction...

Other than that, looks awesome

smashthepants··on Firefly III – Self-hosted financial manager
You can still do that today, even with laravel and composer. There's no requirement to make your deployment process any more complicated...
smashthepants··on CDC says stop vaping as mystery lung condition spreads
Would this apply to vaping 'dry herb'? Or is it specific to oil?
smashthepants··on Show HN: I made a CRM system to make sales fun
Free tier comes with A TON of support demands from people who many not ever become customers. That'd lead to failure a lot quicker. Seems better to have a a few paying customers who are invested in the product providing feedback than hundreds or thousands providing 'feedback' that will never lead to a conversion
smashthepants··on Introducing nushell
What's a dsl? I wasn't able to find an answer in my quick google search
smashthepants··on Show HN: Figma-like measurement tool on any web page (Chrome extension)
Works really well. Thank you.
smashthepants··on Show HN: HN Comments Owl: highlight new comments and collapse old threads
This looks great. I wonder why it's not getting more attention. Thanks for building it.
smashthepants··on Launch HN: Relatively No-Frills Product Hunt Launch Checklist
In order to see this list I have to:

- Copy paste the link, which

- Loads product hunt

- Find the link to your website on PH's weird UI

- Finally land on your site (I'm tired already).

- Click a button "Show me the list"

- Enter my email address

- Wait for an email from you.

I'll let you decide if that's an optimal user experience...

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