Hacker News Reader

toddrewon Salesforce Will Help Relocate Employees from Texas After Abortion Law

"Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids." - Joe Biden

toddrewon Uber says it's leaving Quebec if province insists on stricter rules

Not a likely story. If the driver was an employee at the airport, turning on uber before his shift might result in him driving in the opposite direction for an hour and missing his shift.

In some cities Uber drivers are able to choose drop-off areas, but I don't believe Montreal is one of them.

toddrewon Two-Thirds of Americans Would Utilize High-Speed Rail If It Was Available

Do two-thirds of Americans travel enough to use high-speed rail?

toddrewon The world's largest telescope is going to be built in Chile

I agree about standing out. But as someone that lived in other countries down there for three years before moving to Chile and speaks Spanish, this definitely wasn't the case for me.

Are you in Startup Chile?

Just watch your backpack on the subway or walking through busy streets. During my time there my female room mate had her wallet taken from her backpack at the market and some big charges racked up on her credit card before she noticed.

A month later her parents visited and they climbed Cerro San Cristobal in the middle of the day and had three young guys come out and beat them with sticks to steal their bags. Lots of bruises and stitches.

Another had a iPhone ripped out of her hand while she was using it on the street. Another had his laptop stolen out of his bag on a bus to the coast. Laptops were also stolen by people who just walked into the co-working space that Startup Chile uses.

There's no reason to be scared in Chile. I always felt safe, but don't let the title of safest place in Latin America based on comparative murder rates make you forget that you're still a possible target for a robbery. And based on nothing but my own experience and people I knew, more so than any other place I've ever visited.

toddrewon The world's largest telescope is going to be built in Chile

The murder rates in the other countries are mostly drug related gang on gang violence. I've spent the past four years in Latin America (Mexico, Guatemala, and Chile (was in Startup Chile)) and found Chile to be the sketchiest of places for lesser crimes against tourists like non-violent theft, or assault.

I lived in an apartment with three others, and we were all robbed during the 8 months in Santiago, violently in some cases, and non-violently in other cases. I knew lots of others who were also robbed.

The rest of my years in other Latin American countires, including hitchhiking from Chile back up to Guatemala after Startup Chile was completely safe and uneventful.

toddrewon Ask HN: What to do if you are ridiculously burnt out?

I did the same. Mexico for a couple years (I love Mazunte and Zipolite!) then Guatemala and Chile. Actually moving back to Toronto from Guatemala in a few days after almost 5 years to work with a startup there.

The thing I've found most effective to combat my own burnout has always been a change of scenery and behaviour and getting a fresh perspective on my work.

I would recommend heading somewhere nice, warm, and cheap, and finish your project from there.

toddrewon People Can Be Convinced They Committed a Crime That Never Happened

Reaching a bit?

toddrewon People Can Be Convinced They Committed a Crime That Never Happened

We played a trick on my friend Jerry that I worked with in the military. The previous night we had a few drinks and then called it a night and walked home together.

Jerry, in the morning mentioned to someone that his shoulder really hurt, but he couldn't remember hurting it.

We came up with a plan that morning to convince Jerry that he had been sideswiped by a taxi, and got into a fight with a taxi driver. We emailed everyone we were with the night before, explained to them what we were doing, and started planting that idea in Jerry's mind.

At first he claimed that it never happened. He kept saying he knew we were just fucking with him.

More and more people corroborated the story. We even had a military police officer call him on the phone to inquire about the incident. We got his boss to sit him down and have a talk with him about his problem with alcohol (he doesn't drink that much).

Eventually as the story was repeated to him by everyone, especially people with authority, Jerry went from:

"this never happened.. I only had two beer last night" to: "hmm... maybe I was really drunk after all... but I don't remember anything" to: "Yeah... I remember everything now! How could I have forgotten before? Crazy!?!?"

He turned our story into real memories and even started adding his own details to the story. We thought that was hilarious.

That night we all got together and told Jerry that it was all just a joke. He couldn't believe it. He argued with us that he was sure it did happen. He remembered it. When he finally accepted it he felt really dumb, but it was a really fun day at work for us, so definitely worth it.

toddrewon What's the cheapest living situation possible that still has basic utilities?

Move to a cheaper country. I moved to Guatemala a few years ago and live for around $8000 a year which includes a nice wooden cottage on a lake with three volcanos, decent internet, and eating out in really great restaurants three times a day.

3:05 is the lake https://vimeo.com/87304272

toddrewon Nigerian Billionaire Commits $100M for African Entrepreneurs

I went through Startup Chile last year. Each year the number of Chilean startups applying and being accepted is growing. I would say that's some level of success based on the goal of the accelerator.

toddrewon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (December 2014)

Location: Nomad (Canadian currently in Latin America Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Possibly Technologies: HTML, HTML5, JS, CSS, CSS3, I can build what I design in hacked together ugly code. Résumé/CV: http://andrewtodd.ca Email: andrew@shutter.co

I've been working with startups for the past few years. Went through an accelerator with my own project this year, and currently looking to join a team to design something fun.

toddrewon Town Becomes a Beer Ad, but Residents Don’t Feel Like a Party

Post traumatic stress disorder from a three day party/commercial shoot. Oh the horror.

toddrewon Town Becomes a Beer Ad, but Residents Don’t Feel Like a Party

http://www.9news.com/story/news/local/2014/09/05/crested-but...

"Overall, Crested Butte is expecting to receive an impact boost of $2,000,000, according to Anheuser-Busch's estimations."

toddrewon Town Becomes a Beer Ad, but Residents Don’t Feel Like a Party

Music festivals and other events are held in public spaces all the time. By the look of the town, the detour around the shut down areas might take a whole extra 20 seconds.

toddrewon Town Becomes a Beer Ad, but Residents Don’t Feel Like a Party

For those of you downvoting, do you really think that a 3 day event caused any real impact to the quality of life of the people in this town?

What boost of quality of life did the event bring to those in the town that enjoy things like music and alcohol?

Boost of quality of life for those that enjoyed it + $2,000,000 economic boost - 3 day interruption to those that didn't enjoy it = ?

toddrewon Town Becomes a Beer Ad, but Residents Don’t Feel Like a Party

My favourite music festival is Sappy Fest. It's held in Sackville, New Brunswick, a small town of around 5000 people, Sackville.

http://noisey.vice.com/en_ca/blog/sappyfest-is-atlantic-cana...

In 2011 fresh off their grammy win for best album, Arcade Fire played as a surprise act to a 1000 person tent under the name of Shark Attack.

toddrewon Town Becomes a Beer Ad, but Residents Don’t Feel Like a Party

It's a three day event with an estimated boost of $2,000,000 to the local economy. Boo hoo. Suck it up and enjoy the music.

toddrewon This is what happened when I drove my Mercedes to pick up food stamps

When you don't have money for food, but a paid off Mercedes sitting in the garage, I think it's about time to sell the Mercedes.

toddrewon Teen to government: Change your typeface, save millions

I use to work as a comsec custodian. It was my job to update or replace military publications with the newest version.

In the military/government, forms, publications, and manuals are regularly updated, distributed, and printed. Rolling out a new font on each update before distribution wouldn't be a huge task.

toddrewon Open Letter to Google About Rap Genius SEO

I think Google manual overriding a serp in this case is the way to get the best possible search result. Being at the top of the page shouldn't be about how many links were bought, it should be about quality of content.

Rap Genius has the quality content. The fact that they have to rely on these link building techniques to rise above the trash shows a flaw in Google's approach to ranking.

toddrewon CryptoLocker's crimewave: A trail of millions in laundered Bitcoin

Accepting regular daily cash deposits of hundreds of thousands of dollars at HSBC branches in Mexico without question shows assistance and complicity.

The only people making cash deposits of this size, in Mexico especially, are drug cartels. The HSBC employees at the branch knew what this money was.

toddrewon Go away Cameron – Bypass UK's porn filter

What is the incentive for lawmakers to block pornography?

toddrewon Kevin Rose's new web idea prototype

I'm not sure what it adds to the reading experience other than distraction.

toddrewon Ask HN: Smartest thing you've ever done?

Quitting the military to make significantly less money doing something I loved.

toddrewon Nicotine as a useful stimulant

I started vaping this year. I love it. I've got a usb passthrough that just plugs in and I can sit in a co-working space and smoke and work. It gets some funny looks, but also starts some fun conversations.

toddrewon Why I'm Learning Morse Code

Why I compare it to learning a new language is because after a certain speed it becomes almost impossible to read it out letter by letter. When you get good enough you start to see complete words in the light.

When you learn a new language you go through a stage where you're going back word for word to your own language in your head. Eventually you become good enough to start thinking in the new language.

toddrewon Why I'm Learning Morse Code

It was always visual. It seemed useless at the time, spending hours out in the pouring rain on a ship, sending a message with a flashing light to another ship, but they always reminded us that even with all our technology and cryptography, flashing light is still the most secure method of close ship-to-ship communications because it's directional when using focused light.

toddrewon Why I'm Learning Morse Code

I spent nine years as a naval communicator and am fluent in morse. It's been a few years so I would definitely need a bit of practice to get back up to 12 words a minute on a flashing light.

I can speak three languages and morse was similar to learn. From the first day of training they gave us sheet of paper with the alphabet and the morse translation and told us to memorize a couple of letters. Then they sent us outside to spend hours staring at a flashing lightbulb.

When you recognize a letter your writer (someone with a clipboard standing facing you and away from the light) would write it down, and when you didn't recognize the letter you said "MISS".

The first day was spent saying "MISS... MISS... MISS..." It was extremely frustrating, the same way being immersed in a new language can be. It felt useless... as if I would never get it. Every day we'd spend the morning staring at the light, and little by little we started to get more letters.

Once we mastered it (100%) they would turn up the speed and we'd be back to where we started... "MISS... MISS... ECHO... MIKE... MISS... MISSS..." until we perfected that speed and were moved up again.

It took about three months of daily practice to get up to the military's standard.

I catch myself years later spelling out words in morse in my head.

toddrewon How to Get Funding for Your Startup

Accelerators should have been mentioned in the article.

toddrewon Ask HN: How to solve short term cash flow problem going into an accelerator?

That would suck!