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vfc1

2,750 karma · joined December 4, 2014

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vfc1··on Ask HN: What are your predictions for the next 50 years?
I think a lot of applications will be built without the need for developers, significantly reducing the number of professional developers needed.

Also, testing will be fully AI automated, other than some initial configuration there won't be the need to write tests manually.

Anything that can be done by robots and AI will be done by robots and AI. Things like driving, house cleaning and cooking (at least for restaurants) will be fully done by robots.

vfc1··on Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com burst?
I was working in Lisbon straight out of college in a consulting company, and we were 300 people occupying 3 floors in one of the city's major office areas.

Things were already going downhill, but then 9/11 came, we had a building evacuation etc. and then in the space of 3 months we had downsized to less than 100 people and a single floor, the other two floors where closed.

A lot of people were sent back to their home offices (Spain, Poland and all over Europe) and then laid off there, as major support contracts were not renewed.

The salaries back then and even before in the late '90s were actually about the same as they are now in 2019. The same goes for the consulting rates, they have remained largely unchanged in the past 20 years or so.

If you add up 20 years of inflation, you will see that back then being a software developer was a very interesting option and a job much in demand.

A lot of people went from development into testing, production support, sys admin, business analysis, etc.

vfc1··on Antarctic ice cliffs may not contribute to sea-level rise as much as predicted
So going on 10 billion humans don't have anything to do with it? A large part of the habitable land covered in agricultural fields, polar caps melting, forecasts of 2 degrees increase in temperature by the end of the century, its just all a coincidence?
vfc1··on Antarctic ice cliffs may not contribute to sea-level rise as much as predicted
Yes, I can already see all the articles saying that the meltdown of the ice sheets is "not that bad after all", even though the melting is on record levels in the last few years.

This is why even in the age of the Internet, it's going to take decades until the measures that actually need to be taken to combat climate change to be put in place.

By then we will be well above the 1.5 degrees rise in temperature, and population north of 10 billion.

vfc1··on “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
Even if current levels of radiation are harmless, it does not mean that the same applies to 5G.

Studies funded by the 5G industry are 10 times more likely to say there are no side effects on human, which is suspect and an indication that is an attempt to manipulate science going on - https://nutritionfacts.org/video/does-cell-phone-radiation-c...

The leading independent organization on cancer causes says that current cell phones are "possible carcinogens" - https://nutritionfacts.org/video/cell-phone-brain-tumor-risk...

vfc1··on “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
> HV power lines are, in an electrical sense, very far away from you

I've seen family houses literally next to high tension poles (not just regular poles, I mean those huge ones many times the height of the house), for example in Portugal.

I don't see any definitive conclusion online for the link between high voltage lines proximity and cancer, but I am not an expert. Seems to me the consensus is far from general.

vfc1··on “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
The article is a bit suspect, the author seems to have a personal dislike on the guy. The author works for the American Council on Science and Health which is a nonprofit, but I couldn't find the sponsors.

The article uses personal insult (calling the guy a charlatan) but does not say much about why he disagrees with those positions.

I see no companies on the name of Joel M. Moskowitz, no products sold, no industry sponsors.

On the other hand, I see a guy with no industry ties being slandered online by no reason, weird.

I don't know anything about the guy, if anyone can chime in on why his opinion is not trustworthy I would like to learn more.

vfc1··on “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
> Cancer is not the only risk as there is considerable evidence that RFR causes neurological disorders and reproductive harm, likely due to oxidative stress.

I mean it can't be good all this radiation exposure. As far as I know, people living near large electrical wire high tension poles are at a higher risk of cancer already.

I think so much can already be done with the network bandwidth we already have available. Just using a better protocol on top of HTTP, like everything switching to HTTP2 should be a huge improvement.

How much bandwidth more do we really need, we have hit the limits in terms of video on what is noticeable by the human eye already.

vfc1··on “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
Anything about him worth mentioning? After a quick search online, at first glance, he looks like a reputable researcher.

Does he have industry ties that we should be aware of, reputation issues, conflicts of interest, something else?

vfc1··on Planetary 'autopsies' indicate worlds like Earth common in the cosmos
Due to the exponential rise of the human population, which shows no signs of slowing down, it might go quite fast.

There are many geological processes that get triggered in an exponential way and can radically change the ecosystem.

For example, melting a part of ice cap means less heat gets reflected back into space, meaning more heat that will further melt more ice cap, etc. a potential positive feedback mechanism that once triggered cannot be controlled.

vfc1··on Planetary 'autopsies' indicate worlds like Earth common in the cosmos
> Homo sapiens only exists 30K year

You meant 300k, right? The problem is, the human species is growing at an exponential rate, so if this continues and it's going to be hard not to, the damage tho the ecosystem can go very fast as there are processes that can also be triggered in an exponential manner.

For example, melting of the ice cap would cause not only ocean rise but a lot more heat staying in the planet as ice reflects a lot of it back into space.

Also, a temperature rise of 5 degrees would kill most phytoplankton, which is the main source of oxygen.

All of this sounds very catastrophic, but it might be somewhere in between a few centuries and a few millennia away, which is nothing on a geological time scale.

The current equilibrium that allows for human life on this planet is much more fragile than we think.

vfc1··on Planetary 'autopsies' indicate worlds like Earth common in the cosmos
I think this is also a likely cause, the odds that life even develops beyond the microscopic level, plus the fact that civilizations probably don't last that long combined with the scale of the cosmos and the light speed limitation means that it's unlikely that two civilizations even become aware of each other.

Still, I think it's a bit surprising that no signs of former life have been found so far in both Mars and Venus especially, and even elsewhere in our solar system like on certain moons.

vfc1··on Planetary 'autopsies' indicate worlds like Earth common in the cosmos
> There are detailed structured fossils and strata on Earth that are billions of years old

Yes but that is not detectable from space, right? Also in Mars for example, without excavating specifically for fossils which I think hasn't been done yet, is there a way like certain geological structures that would remain intact after a billion years that would indicate life?

vfc1··on What should have been an IMG element became this
> But I don't care about any of that

OK, fair enough but then it's a different discussion and a different conclusion.

We can't really blame Javascript frameworks for a particular business that has decided to monetize its user base in a different way, by adding more features that are not widely used by their userbase.

Imgur can't exist in a vacuum, it's a business there is a whole team behind it.

Now we might question that whole business model as well and the whole internet supported by ads thing, but that is a whole different barrel of fish that is in my view not attributable to Javascript frameworks.

vfc1··on Planetary 'autopsies' indicate worlds like Earth common in the cosmos
For example, we are now moving away from nuclear due to the dangers associated, so we only have it for less than 100 hundred years.

The half-life of uranium is 4.5 billion years. Let's say civilization of earth is wiped out and someone visits the planet a billion years from now.

Could they tell that there was something here just by the levels of uranium, assuming that say we only used it for 200 years before moving fully to clean energy?

vfc1··on Planetary 'autopsies' indicate worlds like Earth common in the cosmos
Not an expert here, but after a billion years, what would be the detectable residues of such civilization could realistically be detected?

I mean everything made of organic material would be gone, and all constructions would have been turned to dust.

Not saying that there was anything ever in Mars or Venus in terms of intelligent life, but non-intelligent life what traces would it leave?

vfc1··on Number of Self-Published Titles Jumped 40% in 2018
The thing is, Amazon in its privileged monopoly position in practice forces you to choose between publishing exclusively on Amazon or self-publishing, at least for new authors.

This is because unless you agree to exclusivity, you will be denied access to essential marketing tools like free promotions (via the KDP program), which are essential for building initial social proof and give the book at chance to take off in rankings.

Unless you have a pre-existent audience that you can point to your Amazon non-exclusive book, there is zero chance that it will take off.

vfc1··on Planetary 'autopsies' indicate worlds like Earth common in the cosmos
A possible explanation of why we haven't found anything is because intelligent live once developed will quickly overload the ecosystem and start causing things like climate change and quickly make the planet inhabitable, this could all happen in less than 2 million years which is nothing on the cosmological scale.

There was running water on Mars and it's within the goldilocks zone. Probably Venus too, both those planets had stable conditions for the emergence of life for billions of years.

Once a species like humans starts spreading like a virus and taking over the ecosystem, it can easily go downhill very fast (cosmologically speaking).

vfc1··on What should have been an IMG element became this
I think the whole comparison of imgur with a blank page with an image is a bit silly. It's not just the image, its a whole application with comments,image galeries, video playing ability, and of course a ton of iframes with ads which load a lot of content (more images etc.)

Try to do the same feature set without a Javascript framework and using only plain Javascript or even plain HTML and CSS, and then come and tell us about the results.

Also, a lot of the bloat is probably not under the developers control and is added by non technical marketing departments, which want a tracking pixel for this, a tracking pixel for that etc.

But yes its true its insane and its getting worse, and 4G and HTTP2 will not be a solution for most of us anytime soon.

vfc1··on Number of Self-Published Titles Jumped 40% in 2018
For example, for web development, there is a lot of introductory content but there is very little in-depth advanced content published by editors. Advanced content is usually self-published.

And not because people are not looking for that, but because it's not profitable for editors to do several books on the same topic at different levels of difficulty.

What they want is another introductory book on another topic, as they know that is what sells better.

An author getting royalties from advanced books would not be able to make a living, but by self-publishing this becomes much more feasible.

vfc1··on Number of Self-Published Titles Jumped 40% in 2018
No wonder with Amazon taking 70% of the sales price if the e-book goes even one cent above $9.99. If the e-book is sold below that it's "only" 30% - those are absolutely exploitative conditions!

I'm glad that more books are being self-published, I don't trust publishers. I don't know how many times I was aproached on Linkedin and invited to write a book on a topic, just because I've listed it on my profile.

If that's how a lot of technical authors are chosen, that could explain a lot about the quality of a lot of books.

I also don't like the page quotas that publishers have, like it has to be at least 400 pages. Well, what if there is only relevant information for 300? I would rather spare myself the time of reading 100 useless fluff pages.

Also, a lot of potentially good authors get rejected by publishers or not even invited, as publishers have no idea who to ask to write a book to.

The publishers take a premium cut and leave the authors with minimal royalties, meaning that most authors can't make a living from their books, meaning that less books get written.

Allowing authors to self publish lets more authors have a bigger share of the sales, allowing them to continue to write and everyone benefits.

I don't think that the odd quality author that writes a crap self-published book is a good enough of a reason for introducing a middleman, let the market decide. If the book is crap, no one will buy it and it will show. You can only fool the internet for so long.

vfc1··on All plastic waste could be recycled into new plastic: researchers
I wonder how much pollution will this new process of recycling plastic bring. There is so much unnecessary plastic going around in our society, let's start there first.

On my local supermarket, to buy 4 peaches they come in a plastic container fully covered with plastic sheet, I'm not kidding.

vfc1··on Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
A lot of pasture land, for example in Amazonia has actually been created by systematic deforestation, also in Europe, which was deforested a couple of centuries ago.

So a lot of that land could be used for reforesting. And if it would be so simple to use that land to raise cattle, why are there factory farms then?

It sounds cheaper to raise the cows on grass which is free food, unlike rations. Clearly the amount of meat produced that way is not sufficient for the demand.

vfc1··on Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
Depends on what you call decent. I mean for the cow it might have more space to walk around and eat grass.

Still, it will have their child taken at birth, shot, plugged into a milk machine daily, etc.

Farming if left to the natural economic forces in the market will lead to factory farming, unless regulated which is usually not the case. It's on the rise in Europe for example.

It's about supply and demand, and about producing the cheapest product at the highest margin, spending the least amount of money. People at the supermarket will often just choose the cheapest option.

Also, there is the need to feed a lot of people, and with animal products its hard to do that with traditional methods especially given the current levels of meat consumption.

vfc1··on Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
I think the truth is, most people don't care. They just go to the supermarket and throw in their shopping cart the cheapest option, and that's about it.

Its too much work and unrealistic to think people will be that aware, read labels, compare options, etc. It needs to come from the law.

vfc1··on Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
Of course, there are factory farms in Europe. Less than in the US, but on the rise and only getting worse https://www.greenpeace.org/eu-unit/issues/nature-food/1923/f...

Especially for things like chickens and pork, they are prevalent, but also for cows.

Of course, a large portion of European cattle is fed grain rations. Europe is literally covered with feed crops.

This argument that you hear a lot online as "it's a thing of the US" is just not true.

vfc1··on Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
I don't see them going away either, but I think that it's important that the public realizes that they are completely optional for good health.

But there is this perception that they are absolutely essential due to decades of dairy industry advertising and lobbying, and it's simply not true.

vfc1··on Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
That still says nothing about the relative amounts. Are they comparable to the ones in cheese?
vfc1··on Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
As far as I know, you don't need to stop consuming dairy it can happen gradually as you are consuming it too over the course of your life.

It's not an all or nothing thing, there are several degrees to it. Some people will end up in the hospital, others with only sporadic digestive issues not that troubling at first, etc.

vfc1··on Most U.S. Dairy Cows Are Descended From Just Two Bulls
Actually, most crops (80% of the world crops) are for feeding animals.

Shooting the animals yourself is not a very practical solution, or scalable. Sure you could do it for yourself and your family at great expense of your time and even some personal risk, but what about the rest of your city and country?

That would surely not scale, there is just not enough wild game to hunt, it can only be done at certain times of the year., etc.

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