Hacker News Reader

wiglaf1979on Tim Curry has died

Anyone doing wellness checks on Cher? Mel Brooks? William Shatner?

wiglaf1979on Tim Curry has died

I forget which comedian said it in a bit they did but it's always stuck with me.

Something along the lines of "If alternative medicine worked we would just call it medicine."

wiglaf1979on The science of "Zoom fatigue"

Can you please get that app's name? It sounds like something that would immensley help me. I'm hard of hearing and something like this would be amazing to have handy when I can't wear my hearing aids in a specific situation.

I would really appreciate this.

wiglaf1979on Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort?

Not sure of your location but if you are mailing materials like this in the USA it's really cheap. USPS Media Mail.

https://about.usps.com/notices/not121/not121_tech.htm

I've used it to buy/sell large tomes like this and it is really cheap ship things this way. It's not the speediest of delivery methods.

wiglaf1979on A CIA hacker’s revenge

It seems like this disconnect is something that riles you up. Context is key and the weaponization of cyberspace by Nation State actors is being defined as we go along. It's getting to be more than a bit dated but the book and documentary "Countdown to Zero Day" hits on this kind of stuff. I enjoyed the hell out of it mostly. The rest of the time was me getting more and more pissed about how short sighted we were with Stuxnet. Blowback and all that.

Just a recomendation for your reading list since I was thinking a similar pithy comment and figure you might also enjoy that book like I did.

wiglaf1979on Atlassian products have been down for 4 days

I thought this was a joke or something but after googling it you aren't joking....

Wow...

https://architectureau.com/articles/worlds-tallest-hybrid-ti...

Hell of a bet on building more physical space with WFH and other factors making office space cheaper. Plus investing in a new building material concept. This seems like a passion project for someone high up in their food chain.

wiglaf1979on Ask HN: Feeling guilty for doing the bare minimum at work

I was in a similar rut. Not just professionally but academically as well for most of my life. Motivation had to be forced to do more than just enough to blend into the crowd. It took me saying enough is enough in my 40's to go get tested. Turns out I have ADHD. Getting therapy to deal with anxiety and depression stuff as well as getting on Adderall has done wonders.

I'm not suddenly working 40+ hours always in the zone. What has happened is that I've been better able to enjoy/engage with coworkers around helping them. Instead of feeling stuck and anxious, it's been easier to feel at ease at work and less fixated on metrics or usefulness. That engagement with my coworkers coupled with lowering how much effort was needed to do work that was previously seen as "busy" work has done wonders for my outlook about work.

In my case the benefit/problem of hyperfixation due to ADHD meant that when I had an interesting bit of work in front of me I could knock it out the park and it didn't feel like any effort. Those infrequent home runs were enough to make up for the times where I just couldn't be bothered to do other less interesting things. Didn't want to do them and because no one was asking me to do them it was ok that I didn't. Deep down I knew I was overcompensating in my strong areas to avoid the uninteresting items. This may not be you but if it is you may want to think on it. It's helped me outside of work as well. Parenting and dating.

wiglaf1979on It’s hard work to make ordering groceries online so easy

Full disclosure, I work for Walmart in IT and specifically several components for the Online Grocery product.

Ask and ye shall receive. Buzzfeed's Tasty and Walmart have an integration that sounds like what you are looking for. Build a grocery list manually as well as from recipes in the Tasty app. Then when you "checkout" in the Tasty app it'll pre populate your grocery list in the Walmart app. You also select which Walmart you are shopping at so it shifts some of the items around to match like substitutes for what the recipe calls for.

https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2019/08/19/walmart-an...

wiglaf1979on India’s booming dark data economy

Target of the article and target audience is Indian based but it isn't like they are the only country with varying degrees of this crap going on. I wonder how bad will it get before something more meaningful is done?

Equifax survived leaking all that data. That still amazes me. Roughly 1 in 3 Americans had their PII leaked and they suffered minimal fines. Minimal in the fact that they certainly haven't been impacted operationally. If the laws can't punish that level of breach, they aren't going to punish the small potato sized ones either.

wiglaf1979on The New American Status Symbol? A Second Passport

Go give Moneyland a listen or read. It isn't just a new phenomenon and it's going to get worse. With enough money you can dine a la carte to whatever gives you the best options. UK libel laws being one of the better options.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39979237-moneyland

wiglaf1979on Effects of physical attractiveness on political beliefs

Found a non-paywalled version of the paper. https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/about-dev.illinoisstate.edu/di...

I would guess this is the controversial part of the paper.

"Further, we find that attractive individuals are more likely to identify with the Republican Party and more likely to be conservative. "

wiglaf1979on Online School Ratings and Segregation in America (2019)

Public education differs pretty widely from state to state. However, there has been a general trend to start allowing charter schools to exist and for them to allow for enrollment based off of broader geographic area.

Specifically here in Arkansas the laws have created a mess. Unintended consequence or planned loophole, but in any case you pretty much can have your kid apply to any charter school in this state. https://medium.com/orchestrating-change/hey-arkansas-loophol...

It's so bad that Tim Tebow's high school homeschool/football shenannigans are being recreated here. Public school districts are being caught working towards having statewide recruitment for high school football teams. https://medium.com/orchestrating-change/deep-benches-shallow...

wiglaf1979on Jeffrey Epstein's mystery bank came alive after his death

Give Moneyland a read/listen to if you want to go down a rabbit hole about how hard money is to track once it enters an offshore bank account. We really have an international finance issue for situations for this.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39979237-moneyland

wiglaf1979on U.S. immigration policy has been a boon for the tech industry in Canada

No joke. My team has three branches:

  *  Sunnyvale, CA 
  *  Bentonville, AR  
  *  Bangalore, India

We regularly will gossip about best/worst aspects of each of them. My mind is blown at how much they have to pay to live in the greater SF area. 3-4k for rent on an apartment for a small family. My mortgage is 800 a month. A mortgage with a yard big enough for gardens, a bee hive, compost, a couple of trees, basketball goal, fenced in yard, etc....

Of course they get to poke fun at how they cross two timezones and go back 3 decades culturally in time when they fly out to visit. ;-)

The Bangalore folk poke fun at the US based ones at how cold/wet/expensive/boring we all are. It's all in good fun but it really does hammer in how home is where you currently are.

Edit - I

wiglaf1979on Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Reform

In principle it should be but in this case the devil was in the details.

Take the Quadratic Expression forms

  o Standard Form: ax^2 + bx + c
  o Factored Form: a(x – r1)(x – r2)
  o Vertex Form: a(x – h)^2 + k

Arkansas could decide that in Algebra I all students must know those three forms. But the book I had was created off of a standard that said that the Factored/Vertex forms weren't needed until Algebra II so it didn't cover all of them.

I would have needed to recognize that shortcoming and figured out a way to cover it so that my students didn't appear to be lacking according to the ever-shifting standards. Not impossible but arbitrarily stupid to redesign the standards every couple of years.

wiglaf1979on Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Reform

``` If it wasn't bad enough that the politicians feel the need to change things up regularly, you have the well known problems of the morally bankrupt textbook and calculator industries. Unless of course, your school doesn't have enough money to have a book for every student (not a hypothetical; I never saw a math textbook during my time in BTR). ```

I did a similar route for Arkansas and the Non-Traditional Licensure program. My first year teaching circa 2004 I had 18 math text books for Algebra I class that had 25-ish students. The kicker was it was the exact same book that I had when I was a freshman in high school in 1993.

Not only did I not have enough text books, I was using a text book that was at least one maybe two shifts in teaching standards away. Hell, we had a smart board given to the school as part of a grant but no one could use it for fear of tearing it up. A locked up resource does no good, nevermind that a Smart board is useful but at best is a nice to have. Textbooks are a must have in comparison.

It was an utter shit show and explains more about why education in Arkansas is horrible.

wiglaf1979on What America Lost When It Lost the Bison

https://www.americanprairie.org/

Worth going check out what they are doing at trying to reset how the prairie was. We lost such a treasured natural wonder when we destroyed the flora and killed the fauna when we "won" the west.

Dan Flores has a great book called the American Serengeti that dives into how diverse it was. We literally had something on the level of the African Veldt and all the ecological riches that we've turned into a series of unsusaintable agricultural deserts punctuated with cities and suburbs. Here is a Joe Rogan interview with Dan that is worth the listen on this and coyotes in America. Conversation meanders a bit but really is a great episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH1RUk1w_xk

wiglaf1979on Fair, the SoftBank-backed car startup, lays off 40% of staff, sacks CFO

That's a suspiciously precise description...

wiglaf1979on Digital dystopia: how algorithms punish the poor

Two books that dived well into this subject. Unlike this article they have a bit more meat to their research. I would recommend giving them a read before getting your pitchforks only due to this article. It's bad and needs to be fixed but a measured response instead of a purely reactionary response will just make things worse.

Weapons of Math Destruction https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28186015-weapons-of-math...

Automating Inequality https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34964830-automating-i...

wiglaf1979on Computational survivalist

Are you me or a fellow worker at my office? \s

Seriously, that kinda bs is time consuming and soul deadening.

wiglaf1979on Toyota is trying to put solar panels on a Prius to charge battery during the day

Something like this might be what you want. Hangs on the window and is solar powered.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Solar-Sun-Powered-Power-Window-Fa...

wiglaf1979on Sunsetting Python 2

(Unless your manager makes drive-by commits of py2-only code, months after you all agreed that all new code should be py3-compatible, and then leaves town for a multi-week vacation...)

That seems like a very specific example...

wiglaf1979on Fake-branded bars slip dirty gold into world markets

Yep. If you do want to hear some 'crisis' worthy numbers in a similar vein as this article I highly recommend giving "Moneyland" a chance. That's where the money laundering gets bumped up into the professional level. I am glad I listen to the audiobook but man is it disheartening to hear how bad it is globally.

https://www.npr.org/2019/05/01/719001286/moneyland-reveals-h...

wiglaf1979on Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34964830-automating-ineq...

Same boat. I live in town that shows up in US News best places to live. I make bank doing interesting work. Got a wife and kids that are healthy and no real need for anything.

But....

Seeing the automation efforts we are doing in Retail and Transportation scares the shit out of me. Not that it'll occur but the pace that it'll occur. I really wonder if our economy will handle that many people suddenly being out of a job plus the inevitable concentration of wealth that it'll bring. Every month or so we are pushing a new project through the pipeline that'll have real world impact. Insanely fun to figure out the technical challenges but at what point does the long term social cost get factored into the short term economic gain?

Automating Inequality was a rough read because it paints a bleak picture. But seeing that there are others who are aware and working on this at least helped me to realize I wasn't alone with my concerns. Still unsure of how to actively help. Throwing money at EFF only gets so far at fixing things. Debating about taking a pay cut and finding a job more aligned with my principles. Had fun as a family working through a skill checklist for homesteading to help ground my kids in the non-tech world. (Bee hive was a resounding win. Kids were aghast at composting for the garden.)

So no real info to weigh in beyond you ain't alone in that worry or situation.

wiglaf1979on Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2018 edition

* Vagrant/Terraform/Pretty much all of Hashicorp's stuff.

* Ubuntu with an occasional centos instance

* Prometheus/Jaeger because I got tired of not knowing why/when stuff broke.

* Visual Studio Code

* Azure

* Yaml/markdown plugins in VSCode because i got tired of doing things by hand.

* Gitlab