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symlock

93 karma · joined June 11, 2018

another traveler
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symlock··on America's Seed Fund: Up to $1.5M for Zero Equity
The more companies though, the more times the same dollar can be taxed.
symlock··on Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind the first black hole image
Well, other arguments aside, there is a little bit of a difference between a single-system ENIGMA and building multi-system spaceships.
symlock··on A family tracking app was leaking real-time location data
Very Interested, but what markers are there for me to trust you/your company? Is it Open Source? Have you been around for long? Are you audited? Is there a sustainable business model?

The https://www.zood.xyz/products/location#about-zood-location page doesn't really say anything other than you promise you are doing what you say (and you probably are).

symlock··on Unveiling the first-ever image of a black hole [video]
For those wondering how the image was constructed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMsNd1W_lmE

Basically, the image has been constructed by calculations on massive measurement data-sets from multiple synchronized telescopes around the world.

So this isn't a "photo" in the normal sense. It's a reconstruction of many, many radio waves.

symlock··on Xapiand: A fast, simple, modern search and storage engine
Sphinx is a workhorse. Very light memory and CPU usage compared to the popular Elasticsearch.
symlock··on The history of science reveals how to talk to science deniers – Quartz
Understanding non-altered History, science communication, one-or-more scientific fields, marketing, and the human mind is much more than almost anyone can hope to achieve.

This means that both bad science and improper understanding of science will continue.

symlock··on Photograph Your Work
Recommended Open Source Alternative: https://photoprism.org/
symlock··on German politicans doxxed, massive leak of private information
or just greater consequences (fines, imprisonment) so even legitimate uses-cases (whistle blowers?) are scared to say anything.
symlock··on ​Organic food worse for the climate
This headline is incorrect for how little is actually measured in this study. It's like staying that rammed earth houses are bad for the environment because they use more dirt that otherwise might be growing plants - so everyone should build with lumber instead.

They invented a new metric called "Carbon Opportunity Cost" and only looked at one thing: some types of organic farming require more land area which might be otherwise left for forest.

There are so many things that go into farming and a true evaluation of "climate" impact. Synthetic chemical production, environmental contamination, soil depletion, shipping, chemical runoff, farming equipment production and emissions, etc...

Even the researcher understands this: "The type of food is often much more important. For example, eating organic beans or organic chicken is much better for the climate than to eat conventionally produced beef"

symlock··on Decentralised, Real-Time, Interoperable Communication with Matrix
This looks like email, but with shared storage of emails similar to the way IPFS allows nodes to cache pinned content.
symlock··on A university IT guy plans to bid in two government airwave auctions
How long do air wave licenses last? Is there a substantial cost to renew or do you simply have to re-bid?
symlock··on Survival Tips for Women in Tech
Yes, don't be afraid to quit.

I've left companies for some of these situations/items and I'm financially better off.

symlock··on Serverless Docker Beta
I'm not a "serverless hater", but every company I've ever worked with had backend processes that were not tied to HTTP requests. I still keep actual servers around because the HTTP gateway is not the pain point. It's long-running processes, message systems, stream processing, and reporting.

That said, I look forward to the company (or side project) where "serverless" can save me from also assuming the "devops" role.

symlock··on Ask HN: Why are there no public social networks?
There are government run (even if by proxy) social networks. The are worse that Facebook.

https://vk.com/ is government run.

The Chinese "Credit Score" is run by Alibaba and Tencent, which run all the social networks in China and therefore have access to a vast amount of data about people’s social ties and activities and what they say. In addition to measuring your ability to pay, as in the United States, the scores serve as a measure of political compliance. Among the things that will hurt a citizen’s score are posting political opinions without prior permission, or posting information that the regime does not like.

There are plenty more too. Just hope the US doesn't make a government-run social network.

symlock··on The Wisdom And/or Madness of Crowds
Crowds can't have "wisdom" by nature of the averaging that must occur for binary choices/responses from a crowd.

"Knowledge of the Crowd" is the correct phrase as the storage capacity + experience is greater the larger the crowd.

In other words, you can use a crowd to ask questions that the whole does not need to answer: "Has anyone every done X before?" but you cannot use them to ask questions they all should reply to: "Do you all want to do X?"

symlock··on Portable Cloud Programming with Go Cloud
Yes, gofmt is a wonderful since so many other languages can have very different way of writing code leading to harder-than-necessary digestion of new libs or projects.
symlock··on Probiotics for bipolar disorder mania
Most antibiotics & modern medicine kills gut flora. It seems gut flora have more to do with proper nutritional absorption preventing the need of drugs to begin with. Consider the termite's inability to digest wood when their gut flora is destroyed.

After all, no one has an aspirin deficiency.

symlock··on Comcast, in 2nd Try, Offers $65B Cash for 21st Century Fox
> "...had rejected Comcast’s earlier offer partly on concerns the government would block the deal."

> "we are pleased to present a new, all-cash proposal that fully addresses the Board’s stated concerns with our prior proposal."

Anyone know why else the Comcast's offer last year was rejected? The article hints at cash vs stock as possibly being another reason.

symlock··on Things I Learned in the Gulag
> 22. I saw that women are more decent and self-sacrificing than men

The majority of men love themselves while women love others. Men will sacrifice for themselves. Women will sacrifice for others.

Why? Is it global culture teaching a woman from birth her life is about others? A husband and kids? While teaching men that their value is in their work, their job, their income, their power?

symlock··on American toddlers are eating more sugar than the amount recommended for adults
> problems caused directly by excess body fat

I would say this is putting the cart before the horse. It's not excess body fat that is the source of health problems. It's the lifestyle (diet and movement) that leads to excess body fat (as one of the many symptoms of growing health problems) from choices.

In other words, baldness, obesity, sluggishness, headaches, etc... are not the source of health problems - they are the symptoms.

symlock··on Show HN: Fo: An experimental language which adds generics on top of Go
What do you mean?
symlock··on Show HN: Fo: An experimental language which adds generics on top of Go
The only time I find I need generics is when I'm prototyping things and making lots of changes. Node, Ruby, & Python are great for this. In fact, PHP's associative array is really powerful/sloppy since it can be used as a list, hash/dictionary, iterable, or object.

That aside, I don't think I've ever really been bothered by the lack of generics for actual work code.

symlock··on How do dat:// sites interact with servers?
Really neat to see beaker broswer support native P2P with progressive enhancements like github.com/beakerbrowser/hashbase providing the cute URL's we all like.

I'm sure hashbase.io will be blocked really quick, so it's important that the core P2P address system stay in the forefront. Transports also need to find many ways to communicate over https, shadowsocks, tor, DNS, and others.

symlock··on American toddlers are eating more sugar than the amount recommended for adults
"I hate that" people think calories and weight is the primary gauge of health.

It's true weight is very often a negative health indicator because of the toxic nature of the diet that results in weight gain. However, losing weight is not always a sign of being more healthy.

Shutting down your liver, clogging your arteries, and generally filling your soft tissue and fat storage with toxins is not healthy even if you appear to be losing weight.

symlock··on Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition
I missed it the first time, but the article has linked source code (github.com/jackschaedler/handwriting-recognition) for all the D3.js demos that is worth a read.
symlock··on How to become a dramatically better programmer
I would say read and write twice as much code for learning as you do for work.

Like most learning, you have to apply the concepts for them to stick well so just reading isn't helpful until you've practiced the ideas yourself to cement them in your mind.

symlock··on Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
One nice thing about startups / small companies is they can be flexible with work hours.