Hacker News Reader

txshon Uber Will Rent Scooters Through Its App in Partnership with Lime

I know this might be a radical proposal but have you considered, when encountering a bicycle blocking part of a sidewalk, moving slightly to the left. I admit its a crazy proposal but it might help you while you’re waiting for the state to implement the death penalty for scooter infractions.

txshon Uber Will Rent Scooters Through Its App in Partnership with Lime

Sorry. I don’t want to abandon my mode of transportation to appease you OCD. Get over it.

txshon I don’t know how to create a website

SO is getting useless. Search for anything and you have to wade through page after page of “use the search function” replies to legitimate questions. I am, you jackass. The original answer is now a broken link.

txshon Children Beating Up Robot Inspires New Escape Maneuver System (2015)

They’re playing. It’s fun to mess with one robot and not with the other. Mystery solved. Maybe it would surprise the researchers to learn that children don’t treat this as seriously as they do.

txshon The scooter company that raised 400M in 4 months is what is wrong with SV

It reminds me of the 90s when we has a constant stream of articles about people talking on cell phones in restaurants. Cell phones were a crisis that could destroy the restaurant industry. If we don’t ban them nobody will go out to dinner any more because who wants to eat dinner with everyone shouting around you?

Turned out to not be a problem.

People complain about dockless bikes and scooters on sidewalks. But its not like anyone is inconvenienced by them. You’ll get used to seeing them eventually.

txshon Internet is losing its memory: Cerf

I noticed old articles I had bookmarked were disappearing so I’ve started using a self-hosted Bookstack to save a copy of everything interesting I read. I enter reader mode and copy eveeything on the page, and then paste it into the WYSIWYG editor. Everything is formatted nicely and it even creates a menu using the head tags of the sections. The only problem is, while images copy correctly, they’re still hosted on the original server so I have to replace them with an uploaded copy. Only takes a couple of minutes though. I could probably automate this with a script.

txshon Twitter Will Show Who Pays for Ads and How Much They Spend

This only applies to overt ads which are hardly the problem. It does nothing to mitigate the armies of astroturfers influencing public opinion.

txshon How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]

It’s a self-inflicted wound. You can’t help. They’ll just keep killing themselves.

txshon The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

Doesn’t run MacOS. That’s all I need to know.

txshon Research: Women Ask for Raises as Often as Men, but Are Less Likely to Get Them

Having witnessed sexism at work I have a theory about this. I think men are more likely to fight for a raise than women.

If a man is turned down for a raise or promotion he thinks he deserves, he can argue for it and will sometimes be successful. If a woman is turned down for a raise or promotion she thinks she deserves, no matter how she handles the issue, people seem to treat it as a case of discrimination.

I’ve seen women quietly leave a company rather than fight for a raise because they didn’t want to create a controversy.

Sexual discrimination is real and hurts women. I don’t deny that. But I think making every personnel problem involving a women a case of sexual discrimination is more hurtful to women than it is helpful. It makes it impossible for a woman to assert herself without appearing to be an aggressive feminist.

txshon You don't need an Apple Mac laptop–everything you need is in a Google Chromebook

You don’t need a car. You can just walk everywhere.

txshon Big Tech Isn’t the Problem with Homelessness. It’s All of Us

Decades of redlining have conditioned people to associate minorities moving into a neighborhood with the decline of property values. Black and brown people appearing on sidewalks is a signal to sell and move to a nicer neighborhood. If you don’t, your other white neighbors will and you’ll be the sucker left with a house you can’t sell as its value plummets. It’s called “white flight”.

That’s what this this issue is really about. Poor people = minorities. NIMBYs want to keep the minorities out of their neighborhood because they’ll trigger white flight.

txshon Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

> If you ask me, it is more likely for watsons law to be ...burn thru hundreds of millions and ultimately fail rather then the intended meaning.

That’s already called Musk’s Law.

txshon When a Mars Simulation Goes Wrong

What a complete waste of time. The point of a simulation like this would be to see observe how people react in isolation and under stress. But, reading this article, its clear that these people are acting to please the scientists rather than reacting naturally to events.

If everyone clucks like a chicken on Day 7, is it because that’s what happens under these conditions or is it because the software developer from New York saw it in a movie and thinks that’s what the scientists want to see? They’re even quoting lines from the Martian while they are in the simulation.

They are playing make believe. This is not science.

txshon Fewer Births Than Deaths Among Whites in Majority of U.S. States

> So clearly you can have technological advances without any productivity growth.

A little perspective is required. From the 1860’s to the 1960’s we went from candles and horses to computers and the moon landing. In the past 50 years nothing comparable to electricity, automobiles, flight, space flight, antibiotics, refrigeration, computers, telephones, radio, nuclear power, etc. has been invented. We have only refined technology invented by our great grandparents. Our civilization is stagnant and incapable of producing the kind of people who can move us forward. And, when the population begins to decline, we’ll begin to regress. Our great grandchildren might only read about airplanes in books.

txshon States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules

No. We’re talking about sales tax, not gift tax.

txshon States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules

Wrong. If you live in a state without income tax, buy a product from a company in the same state, and then ship the product to your friend in Texas, you have to pay Texas sales even though you have never been to Texas.

txshon Fewer Births Than Deaths Among Whites in Majority of U.S. States

Exactly.

Population deceleration is a global crisis and virtually nobody is talking about it. It could mean the end of Western civilization.

Our governments are built upon the assumption that the population will continue to increase, that there will be more taxpayers tomorrow to shoulder the burden of today’s spending. When the population begins to decrease in a few decades, every successive generation will have a lower standard of living than the one that proceded it. Having children will become more expensive which will lead to even more decline. Western countries will enter a death spiral and might never escape.

txshon Show HN: Enlight – Learn to code by building projects

This is fantastic. The hardest part of solo programming to me is coming up with an idea.

txshon A former Theranos employee's account of life inside the company

Not any less authentic than Elon Musk’s hairline. Nobody seems to have a problem with men spraying on hair from a can. Why shouldn’t a woman alter her voice?

txshon U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

Hopefully, Musk is next on their list.

txshon U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

You don't see criticism because critical posts get deleted.

txshon Comcast, in 2nd Try, Offers $65B Cash for 21st Century Fox

Could it be that Comcast is just trying to increase the price of Fox to stop Disney from buying it or at least make them pay a lot more for it?

txshon Aristo – A system that reads, learns, and reasons about science

> Who is the president of the United States?

>Aristo's Answer: the honorable barack obama

>Confidence: 60.00%

> Question: Who is the son of God?

>Aristo's Answer: Jesus