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vonkow

196 karma · joined June 11, 2010

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vonkow··on FCC sides with Google Fiber over Comcast with new pro-competition rule
IMHO, the United States lacks a true left wing party and the Democrats are the party of moderate regulation/legislation (which is unfortunate for a number of reasons).
vonkow··on The Eudora Email Client Source Code
While only tangential to the article, the short story from which Eudora gets its name is fascinating in both its depth and simplicity: http://art-bin.com/art/or_weltypostoff.html
vonkow··on Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud
No, that's my way of saying, who cares how many points I have on an internet forum and how are said points relevant to what I am saying? I glance at what's on HN in the morning and occasionally comment when something is super relevant or when I'm bored and sipping on a drink after work.

I was sniping at you and your, oh so typical, defence of trolling, but since you want to talk about Martin (are you on a first name basis or something?), he's a terrible person for waaaaay more reasons than threatening to burn an album. You wanna talk about kicking people when they're down? Let's start with jacking up the price on a drug that a good number of people with HIV need to survive, because that's kicking someone when they're down, unlike calling out a troll for being a troll. Sure, he was legally in his right to do so, but just because something is legal doesn't make it morally the right thing to do.

Thanks for reminding me why I rarely comment on things online, I have better things to do than argue with someone who sees more humanity in a troll than they do in the people he has hurt.

vonkow··on Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud
I didn't say anything about anything beyond the fact that that's the classic defence of trolling and it's a piss poor one. Cool that you looked at my karma tho, like it means something. I've been around the block more than a few times and am generally too busy to comment on hacker news.

Also, way to use the term virtue signalling to offhandedly dismiss anyone that thinks people should treat other people with some amount of respect.

Anyway, I hope you have a good day and that you treat others the way you would like to be treated.

Edit: and yeah, I pulled a few pranks when I was like 15. They were stupid and I grew out of it once I learned that my actions affected others.

vonkow··on Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud
Ah, the #1 go to defence for terrible people when they get called out for their actions, "it's just a joke, I was just kidding, don't be so sensitive."
vonkow··on Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors
That's going to be up to you, the Amazon employee.

Personally, I'm unwilling to work for a company who's values are in severe opposition to my own, so I would probably quit my job over something like this (if I felt strongly enough about it).

vonkow··on Rover raised $65M for pet sitting
I'm an engineer at Rover and we're definitely hiring. If you enjoy writing python and want to work with a great team of people (and dogs), you should totally apply.
vonkow··on Explain like I’m 5: Kerberos (2013)
Oh man, that really takes me back.
vonkow··on “A closure is a poor man’s object; an object is a poor man’s closure” (2003)
Erlang is an amazing language for learning how to effectively use OOP principles. I feel like anyone who works primarily with class-based languages owes it to themselves to write a few server-like modules in Erlang even if they never touch the language again.
vonkow··on Tmux and Vim – better together
Check out spacemacs, it works beautifully out of the box.
vonkow··on Using A-Frame for WebVR and AR
Yes. Personally, I think VRML's biggest flaw was that it was ahead of its time.
vonkow··on FBI Arrests Man For Allegedly Sending Journalist Seizure-Causing GIF
"triggering" someone is not the same thing as triggering a seizure.
vonkow··on FBI Arrests Man For Allegedly Sending Journalist Seizure-Causing GIF
Just like yelling "fire" in a crowded theater (where there is no fire), sending someone a gif in the hopes that it causes a seizure is not protected speech. It's assult.
vonkow··on Choosing Functional Programming for Our Game
Not very, according to it's website http://arcadia-unity.github.io/

Also looks like the last commit was 2 months ago, FWIW.

vonkow··on Harvard Square Classic Cafe Algiers Closing Forever Sunday
Just my personal observations over the past 15 years or so, but I think laptops and headphones killed the cafe.
vonkow··on Harvard Square Classic Cafe Algiers Closing Forever Sunday
I used to skip class in high school to go drink turkish coffee, chain-smoke, and discuss life, poetry, code, and philosophy at Cafe Algiers. I think I learned more there than I did in class. Sad to see it go, kicking myself for not dropping in last time I was in Boston, but all things must pass.

Farewell, Algiers, thanks for all the memories and conversations.

vonkow··on Stick a Fork in Ethereum
On paper that sounds great, but 51% computing power rapidly becomes a "central/political/technical institution" in the real world.
vonkow··on Amazon Has Swallowed Downtown Seattle
I don't really disagree, but it's a 50 minute (uphill) walk from Pike Place to Volunteer Park, whereas it's 15 minutes to the edge of SLU. I don't really mind walking an hour, but many people do.

Golden Gate is a little out of the way, Central Park is super accessible by subway.

vonkow··on Amazon Has Swallowed Downtown Seattle
They're all lovely parks, but none are within walking distance of downtown.
vonkow··on Docker Betas for AWS, Azure, Mac, and Windows
Terraform + any old CI + Elastic Beanstalk works wonderfully for deploying docker apps on AWS.
vonkow··on Fewer Americans Choose to Move to New Pastures
I'm pretty sure the kind of people who used to move from Akron to, say, Philedelphia for more opportunities before middle america's mobility and income were severely reduced by the march of progress can't quite afford to move to London in hopes of finding a better life these days.
vonkow··on What Dwarf Fortress Taught Me About Startups
Very true, but even with graphics mods the difference in ease of use between DF and KSP's interfaces is vast.
vonkow··on What Dwarf Fortress Taught Me About Startups
Depends if they like starting at ASCII. KSP has a much more familiar interface and would probably be the better route to go.
vonkow··on What Dwarf Fortress Taught Me About Startups
I'm really surprised that the author didn't get into one of the main ways a fortress fails. It's humming along smoothly and then suddenly the population doubles in size when a group of settlers (VC cash) arrives and the whole place goes to hell from disorganization and growing pains.
vonkow··on Managing two million web servers
Yes, you can (mostly) implement this behaviour in pretty much any modern server framework or language. The point is, you get this behaviour for free as a core part of the language. I write a lot more javascript than erlang these days and I really miss being able to just say, "let it fail".
vonkow··on Office UI Fabric
Don't talk smack about IE 5.5, unless you think AJAX was a bad idea.
vonkow··on HTML is done
Access to primitives such as lines, polygons or pixels, you say? Canvas, SVG, and WebGL fit that bill.
vonkow··on Spacemacs – Emacs advanced kit focused on Evil
Learning vim is like learning Kung Fu, you practice the same awkward route motions until they're so natural that you don't even notice you're doing them. Sadly, it's not a quick process, but it's worth it.
vonkow··on Rent Control Creates Higher Rents in SF
I grew up in Cambridge. When rent control went away, the rent skyrocketed and a large swath of the lower/middle class was forced to move to the suburbs.

It sucks, because only 2 or 3 towns in MA had rent control, but developers scared city councils across the state into voting to ban the practice.

vonkow··on A love letter to MIT
I still haven't gotten around to going to college, don't think I ever will, unless I get bored and someone wants to take a PhD candidate with no formal education. Currently, I build websites and educational software for WGBH.

My parents, step-mom, and godparents (all MIT grads) have each held a number of eclectic jobs, from comptational biologist, to technical writer, to human/machine interface in college admission offices, to webmaster, to landscaper, to politician, to managing large philanthropic organizations.

What strikes me, is that in each of those jobs all of them have excelled, and MIT played no small part in the matter.

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