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wfbarks

70 karma · joined April 6, 2014

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wfbarks··on Facebook Announces Meta Verified
* Tim Cook has entered the chat *
wfbarks··on Meta ordered to pay $175M for infringing on two patents held by Voxer Inc
WTOI - Walkie Talkies on Internet
wfbarks··on Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health
I took a long break (maybe 5 years or so) but I have recently started using both FB and Instagram and have been surprised at how positive my time has been on these platforms. On FB I have been finding interesting local groups and events (just moved to a new city) and on Instagram, I have been enjoying seeing updates from real friends.

On the other hand I recently deleted Twitter from my phone. I love twitter for getting interesting infromation and staying up to date with news, but the whole culture there has just turned into cheap dunking on one another, and its just guaranteed to leave you feeling angry about something. Extremely disruptive to mental state.

I spend some time on the TikTok-like products as well (youtube shorts / fb reels) and have found them to be just a really easy way to completely waste an hour for no reason whatsoever. Less disruptive to mental state than twitter though.

wfbarks··on Ask HN: Why are chess problems attack oriented?
Would be interesting to write an algo to generate defensive puzzles, seems like you could look at positions where the delta between the best move and the next best move is very high in terms of centipawn loss.
wfbarks··on How to win at the world championships of financial modeling
The only winning move is not to play
wfbarks··on Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus
Does proof of history as implemented by Solana find a middle ground here?
wfbarks··on YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud
I find this action very alarming and ominous.
wfbarks··on Burnout can exacerbate work stress, further promoting a vicious circle
I'm too burnt out to read this article that might help me understand my burnout, its a vicious circle.
wfbarks··on Swift System Is Now Open Source
The versioning issues have improved significantly as the language has matured.
wfbarks··on The Three Bay Areas (2017)
$1.1 mil for a 2 bedroom house in Potrero is a steal.
wfbarks··on Neanderthal gene linked to increased pain sensitivity
It brings me great pain that this website is down
wfbarks··on Twitter Bot which posts a frame from the Godfather every 3 hours
Really incredible how well each shot is framed. Are the frames picked at random? or picked from a pre-selected timestamps.
wfbarks··on [dead]
I saw this on the front page on my phone, then moved to my laptop, and it was gone from the front page.
wfbarks··on Do journalists pay too much attention to Twitter? (2018)
Folks not on twitter have been getting second hand twitter for the past couple of years.
wfbarks··on Transcribed police scanners in real-time
"strength tenets we do not have any to 9 available yeah five-year-old advisor. We have several dogs around miracles"
wfbarks··on Facebook executives shut down efforts to make the site less divisive
wish that I could actively decide not to pay attention to this comment, but I am unable.
wfbarks··on US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M
thats basically my point, Companies still aren't taking responsibility for anything and are running the companies to keep the share price up so the Exec team can collect on their options in 4 years and move on. Similarly the government seems completely incompetent, and willfully blind to the risks being taken.
wfbarks··on US unprepared for an electrical grid collapse, but it costs only $300M
I feel like 2008 was an era of irresponsibility. Home buyers took out risky loans, banks sold these loans without accepting responsibility for how risky they where, investors purchased these loans without taking the responsibility to even see what kind of Loans where even in these mortgage backed securities. Ratings agencies abdicated this responsibility too. Goldman lied to AIG, and AIG didn't do the research to understand the credit default swaps they where selling. Central banks didn't accept responsibility for anything, saying "it was impossible to see the crisis coming".

It doesn't appear that we have left this paradigm at all. The only group that has improved is the consumers, households have significantly cut back leverage since the 2008 crisis. But companies have not. Companies don't feel they have any responsibilities to prepare for these long tail situations, and governments don't seem capable of doing it. leaving it to central banks to throw trillions at the problem after the fact.

wfbarks··on Moxie, a Social Robot That Helps Kids with Social-Emotional Learning
I'm short this
wfbarks··on Tesla Q1 2020 Update
Bonus probably goes straight to spacex
wfbarks··on Tell HN: Cisco WebEx on OS X uses the same pre-installer tricks as Zoom
I hate it when the software I am trying to use installs itself on my computer after I click on it.
wfbarks··on The Epic Online Orchestra
Heart shaped box: https://epiconlineorchestra.com/E/C/A/A/E/C/A/A?autoplay
wfbarks··on Machine learning is fundamentally conservative
Totally agree with you here, I knew the comment I agreed with would be buried down here.

a good TL;DR; of this article would be:

Computers are not yet sentient life forms capable of understanding the real wants and needs of human beings. Current day recommender systems, and predictive text systems are just very souped up statistics, that don't really have a lot of context or understanding of the world and their role in it.

wfbarks··on The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM (2018)
When people are truly free to choose the careers they want, it accentuates natural gender preferences.
wfbarks··on Engineer Says Software Firm Cut Her Maternity Leave Short After Her Baby Died
How long was she originally going to take off, and how long did after this tragic loss happened did the company ask that she return?
wfbarks··on NASA Wants to Send Nuclear Rockets to the Moon and Mars
For the first time, period. Doesn’t look like we had one 60 years ago...
wfbarks··on Men Arrested at Courthouse Say They Were Sent to Test Its Security
Reminds me of that time I hired a boxing coach and he punched me in the face, what a jerk!
wfbarks··on What happens to tech workers when their skills become obsolete?
They evolve into birds and fly away outside
wfbarks··on The Moral Rot of the MIT Media Lab
Nice hit piece
wfbarks··on Large Underwater Observatory Disappears Without a Trace
I first read this as “Large Underwear Observatory”
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