Hacker News Reader

smpetreyon Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

I mean, Amazon could've just as easily agreed to $25 minimum wage. But, hey progress I suppose (or is it inflation?).

smpetreyon Apple has completed its acquisition of Shazam

Holy shit I had no idea, that's nothing short of amazing.

smpetreyon “Sand Dams” Are Transforming African Drylands

Piggybacking to post this PDF. It's titled, "Practical Guide to Sand Dam Implementation." Very thorough.

http://www.bebuffered.com/downloads/PracticalGuidetoSandDamI...

smpetreyon Tesla Accounting Chief, HR Head Resign on the Same Day; Stock Plunges

Here's the none-AMP Bloomberg article:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-07/tesla-chi...

smpetreyon RssHub – A feed aggregator that can generate feeds from pretty much everything

Neat! Now if it could only RSS-ify literally anything this could be useful.

smpetreyon Zero-Day Vulnerability in Microsoft Windows Leaked on Twitter

Yikes, that's a nasty one. Sad MSFT didn't want to pay bounty on this.

smpetreyon Y Combinator Learns Basic Income Is Not So Basic After All

In the experiment, it's taxable income.

There's no shortage of frameworks and differing philosophies on the matter of taxation of the UBI. But generally speaking, no, the $1000 would be considered tax-free as for all intents and purposes, it's a gift from the coffers of government's treasury.

Income generated outside of the UBI however, is taxed because well.. it's income and not a gift.

smpetreyon Show HN: Windows 95 in an Electron App

This is simply delicious.

smpetreyon A Tiny, $25 Million Mistake (2014)

> Update: There was a typo in the original post -- the word "word" was misspelled as "world." Thank you to the commenters for bringing it to our attention.

Lovely serendipity.

smpetreyon Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

I'm betting on Europa. Lovely little moon, so many mysteries. Can't wait to see what we uncover from there.

smpetreyon The Best Answer to Fanaticism—Liberalism (1951)

Link to the full PDF:

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1951/12/16/898...

smpetreyon MacBook Pro with faster performance and new features for pros

> The new keyboard has the same dimensions and look as its two predecessors, but the keys feel just a little bit different. They're quieter, for one thing. They have a softer, less click-y feel that is a little closer to the pre-2016 models' chiclet keys. We found the new keyboard to be a little nicer to type on, but it's not a radical difference. It's unlikely to convert the detractors, but it's a welcome iteration for those who liked or didn't mind the previous butterfly keyboards.

So, I guess this is the fix we've been waiting for huh?

smpetreyon MoviePass Parent Files to Raise $1.2B to Stay Afloat

Agreed. They should have just filed for bankruptcy instead.

smpetreyon Apple is rebuilding Maps from the ground up

This right here.

smpetreyon Slack outage: Connectivity issues affecting all workspaces

Yikes. This one looks like a doozy. Herre's to hoping there's a post mortem this time around.

smpetreyon Hacker News Highlights: April and May 2018

I'm digging these Highlights. Very handy.

smpetreyon Remote Only

100% agree. I think this would even apply to non-remote jobs too.

I used to work remotely as a freelancer and I miss it so much. I now work in-house at an agency and everyone here fails so miserably at writing. Almost all discussion is verbal, nothing is documented and so much double-work happens it's not even funny.

To make matters worse, the agency doesn't use any project management software. So all projects have seemingly imminent deadlines. It's miserable.

If our team was more apt to learn, adapt and document more, we'd probably be a lot happier.

smpetreyon Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders

Those pesky paywalls.

smpetreyon Federal Judge Rules Trump May Not Block Critics on Twitter

Wow. Didn't see that coming.

smpetreyon Pocket Casts acquired by NPR

> Audio veteran Owen Grover will serve as CEO of Pocket Casts. Grover previously served as Executive Vice President and General Manager at iHeartRadio, and before that as Vice President of Programming and Marketing at Clear Channel Music & Radio. Pocket Casts will operate as a joint venture, with founders Philip Simpson and Russell Ivanovic in leadership roles and the existing staff and developer team remaining in place. To ensure development aligns with the mission-driven ethos of public radio, the board will be comprised of representatives of the public media leaders.

Well, that sucks.

smpetreyon Olia Lialina, 'Summer' (2013) Animated GIF

Holy shit. Gonna bookmark this for later, and study up on this one. Thanks for sharing.

For those interested: http://contemporary-home-computing.org/turing-complete-user/

smpetreyon Olia Lialina, 'Summer' (2013) Animated GIF

The Current Museum put together a really wonderful write-up regarding Olia's work. [1]

An excerpt:

In Summer (2013), a GIF of a woman swinging back and forth from the viewer’s browser bar, Lialina devises a clever way to mimic earlier, slower web experiences on a more modern connection. The 18 frames of the GIF are hosted across 26 different sites, making them vulnerable to the whims of load times, site bugs, and outdated code. Michael Connor writes, “It reminds us that each time we view the work, we will experience it in a slightly different way, reflecting the shifting conditions of the network and our position within it.”

[1] https://d.rip/thecurrent/posts/RHJvcFBvc3QtMjQ3OQ==

smpetreyon The last day of linotype at the NYT (1978) [video]

Truly

smpetreyon What the new Gmail looks like

What has it been? 10 years since the last refresh? Looking forward to this, but leery of the new features.

smpetreyon A Parable

Totally. I suppose that's due in large part to the fact we owe our existence to cycles (water, moon, CO2, solar, etc). But time as a construct is bizarre nonetheless.

smpetreyon Forensic seismology analysis of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001

I was perusing Anil's archives, and came across this post:

http://anildash.com/2001/09/terry-wallace-a.html

Sadly, the hyperlinked findings in his blog post were 404'ing but luckily were previously archived. Enjoy.

For more about Terry Wallace:

http://web.archive.org/web/20021202032952/http://www.geo.ari...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Wallace_(geophysicist)

smpetreyon Data on 1.2M Facebook users from 2005 (2011) [use archive.org url in thread]

Yup. Here's a Google Cache for those interested:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bxG_r4W...

smpetreyon Ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

Well of course this was routine. Facebook prides itself on it's data collection and ad targeting. I'm not discounting The Guardian's reporting, but I thought this was known.

I mean you can download your data here and see what endpoints/interests you can be targeted on: https://www.facebook.com/help/302796099745838

Sadly, the world will continue to use Facebook and users will continue to be exploited.

smpetreyon #deletefacebook

Agreed. I deleted my account 2 weeks ago and haven't looked back either. Instagram on the other hand is still one of my favorite ways to share photos with my friends.

I think the facebook(.com) product has some serious soul-searching to do and if they continue to ignore their monumental problem -- it will not end well for them, nor their stockholders.