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xzel

1,038 karma · joined July 27, 2013

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xzel··on Visa Advertising Solutions (VAS) Opt Out
Most open source text captchas have ML/DL or OpenCV OCR solutions and more advanced captchas like gcaptcha/hcaptcha you can send to a solver farm like 2captcha. The cost for the farm solutions is pretty cheap.
xzel··on Tsundoku: The art of buying books and never reading them
There are a couple of super easy techniques you can implement. I got mine from the Tim Ferriss book 4 hour work week. I think this blog by him provides a good summary: https://tim.blog/2009/07/30/speed-reading-and-accelerated-le...

I won't do this for books I want to enjoy such as fantasy and sci fi (although sometimes through the more monotonous parts). I will use a few of these for articles/papers until I get to a part which is more technical. Good luck!

xzel··on Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
Your typesetting website is absolutely gorgeous. I will totally keep it as a reference for beautifully simple websites.

On the template front: this is exactly the type of resource I wish I had in college while learning and using Latex. Thank you for your contributions! I'm forwarding on to a few academic friends.

xzel··on Justice Department Sues to Block Visa's Proposed Acquisition of Plaid
CapOne’s API snd docs, technical customer support and their easy to use VCC generation has kept me with them long after I had expected. Other than Amex they’re probably the only big “bank” I’d recommend (and Fidelity for checking).
xzel··on The $2B Mall Rats
It’s legal because there someone on the otherwise taking their bet. They’re not making money on the actual foreclosures, just the bonds going bad, which I agree is kinda similar. Some of those trades you could think of as catastrophic insurance policies.

There are a few bigger issues here: why did the malls go bad? Could they simply not adapt to online or were they saddled with debt like some take over companies do? And should a mall ever take out a position like hedgedund did to protect against their own downfall?

I’m not really trying to pick sides here but to me we should be more worried about why snd how the malls fell snd less about who made money when they did.

xzel··on AlphaFold: a solution to a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology
Look at all of the incredible things that came out of Bell labs during their monopolistic reign. I think a better way to put it is not all monopolies are bad for research and progress but many are bad for other social and economic reasons. Like any position of power, it depends on how it is used snd who is using it.
xzel··on Advent of Code in Haskell: T Minus 16
Brent’s class is a great place to start learning Haskell. I actually took the first iteration of the class many years ago and Brent was a great teacher.
xzel··on How to deal with extreme physical pain
I've had unexplained knee pain for almost a decade. I've done everything people recommend, stretches, PT, rolfing (which is great to be honest) etc. I was and am currently in great shape and stretch for 30-60 minutes a day. The only thing I've ever found to work for bad days is over the counter 8mg Codeine tablets you can get in Canada. I can't get them in the US or even for a doctor to consider it, they're terrified of prescribing pain medicine. Because of Covid I haven't been able to go to Canada for a while and I'm worried what will happen in the next few months. The over reaction to opioid abuse and other people abusing the system has really punished people with chronic pain. I have friends who have been on opioids of pain management, veterans, getting cut off cold turkey by their physicians.
xzel··on CA Law Was to Give Uber Drivers New Protections. Instead, Comedians Lost Work
I think it could be within the budget, especially considering how much is currently spent by employers, which could be turned into a tax and funneled into "California health care". The bigger issues would be negotiating with medical providers, the hospital systems and multiple levels of US medical bureaucracy. Even then, for example medicare/medicaid, look how much fraud if often found around over paying / unnecessary procedures etc. In my opinion, because of how much traction and jobs exist at multiple levels of pharma to insurance to medicine in the US, I almost think it's an intractable problem, but I wish it wasn't.
xzel··on Go modules have a v2+ problem
I come to judge language's quality of documentation almost solely on their documentation around local and module imports. If they don't provide clear documentation on that subject, which is paramount imo to getting past simple scripts, then the rest of their higher level documentation is probably lacking. I've been upgrading some personal Go projects I have to a more modern folder layout (pkg, internal, etc. vs. src folder) and I really found their documentation lacking. Rust for example, in their imports, is so so, but I've found way better external examples for imports in Rust than Go.
xzel··on Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content
There is a setting in Prime Video to download the highest bitrate which is often around 4GB for a 2 hour movie, iirc. Totally agree with you on the download in advance rentals. With good enough internet it makes the experience of rentals so much more enjoyable.
xzel··on Antibiotics nearly double risk of developing IBD, doctors warn
Creatine cycling has been a thing since I started lifting more seriously, at least 15+ years ago. There was often a loading period, where you would take more, and a maintenance period, both normally given as a g/kg or mg/kg value of creatine to body weight. I believe the idea was either your body became less responsive to the increase creatine in your system of time or your stores become saturated. I'm not sure what research now shows or how seriously cycling/loading not taken these as I'm not a trainer nor a nutritionist, but it something I did when I first started lifting and that's what I remember learning about taking it.
xzel··on Rideshare operations are being suspended in California
I'm not trying to prove anything, just exploring. Anyways, I'm talking about the result. I also don't know enough about CA employe law to make any claims, which I don't think I did.
xzel··on Rideshare operations are being suspended in California
Yes neither of my examples were exactly the same. I'm talking about feel and results and specifically I wasn't talking about how current drivers operate, I was talking about how the resulting circumstance might exist in the future.

But to go back to the tutoring example: if I was working for a tutoring company, agreed to take clients between lets say 1-5 PM, and the rate was set by the company, would that be similar enough?

xzel··on Rideshare operations are being suspended in California
I've done tutoring for people in small increments like 15-30 minutes for questions before tests. That seems similar to micro-shifts though that is freelance. Lawyers have billable hours and work for multiple clients. Some firms do have compensation tied to billable hours as well. While it's not exactly the same thing the result feels similar to me.
xzel··on Using Obsidian to manage goals, tasks, notes, and software dev knowledge base
Yes I thought one of the things he didn’t like about Obsidian was it is closed source / proprietary. I do think they overlap pretty heavily. I’m personally going to give Obsidian a try tomorrow and see how it compares.
xzel··on Using Obsidian to manage goals, tasks, notes, and software dev knowledge base
boostnote.io might be a good tool for you. Its basically a markdown renderer + code coloring with some extra search and other features. The first version is open source and I believe the second version also will be (but not positive). you can also store your folder of notes in a dropbox folder and get decent syncing out of the box. I've been using it for two years now and don't have any complaints. I will have to admit I haven't moved over to their second version yet so I might be missing something.
xzel··on Robinhood now valued at $11.2B with new fund backing
Ah someone mentioned Active Trader, which I think is pretty decent. If you're trading a lot look into Interactive Brokers. I think they're still top of the line for publicly offered trading.
xzel··on Show HN: I got a list of 2000 Venture Capitalist Firms
Hey OP or whoever owns the site. Both the logo and the home button on the blog go to the blog homepage. Would be nice if one of them went to the actual homepage. Also, there appears to be a small UI bug on your pricing page for the Hobby section. The red box isn't centered around the text, its off to the left a bit.
xzel··on Show HN: Warp, a Python based music-theory aware MIDI sequencer
They actually have some cool features to allow multiple scales and scale changes, so intentional accidentals are promoted. This looks a lot like the Ableton Push controllers besides the direct Ableton integrations. I think the unintentional accidents are what would be missed, and those can be just as good.
xzel··on A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid
I'm not sure how playing in a bubble without fans means they are a ghost. Honestly I wish fans didn't come back to live sports. Hearing the game and player noise makes everything much more enjoyable. I think most pro-sports are currently doing great besides missing ticket revenue, especially compared to a few months ago when they weren't going at all.

Anyways, I don't think measuring recovery in the number of events and parties is a very good metric. Though I agree without that there probably isn't going to be true herd immunity for this and I wish people would stop throwing around the term.

xzel··on A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid
How are sports teams a ghost of what they were? NHL playoffs are incredible right now. European soccer is wrapping up and play is great. NBA is just getting started. Most of them just canceled games or took a break, which, for example, the NHL used to do every 4 years for the Olympics. The only sport that seems to be having real trouble is the MLB, who just had a terrible plan. I admit, I have no belief the NFL has any chance due to team and personal size but that is just life. Not to mention esports which has barely slowed down after the first few months where they had to cancel in person events.
xzel··on Facebook Fired Employee Who Collected Evidence of Potential Political Bias
To preface I'm going to be loose with the actual decision of Citizens United: Ironically, since the Supreme Court ruled restrictions on spending money was a violation of the first amendment, one could argue that losing your paycheck, and your ability to spend money you would have otherwise had, is a form of losing their speech.

I'm not sure I believe any of that but I think it is an interesting idea.

xzel··on TikTok’s Chinese owner offers to forego stake to clinch U.S. deal – sources
I've heard the argument a few times YouTube actually loses money, besides just being a money sink. Does anyone have anything from Google talking about margins or profit/loss of youtube? I've never been able to find anything concrete on the issue. This is the best I've ever been able to find [1]

1. https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...

xzel··on Public asked to report receipt of any unsolicited packages of seeds
Invasive species are mostly bad for ecosystems. They introduce a lot of unknowns. There is nothing safe for neither humans nor wildlife about possibility introducing invasive species.
xzel··on Amazon Warehouse scam: 16TB HDD swapped for 8TB, returned for full refund
I'd recommend abebooks.com. Everything I've received has been in great shape and since it is media mail shipping is free or at most a dollar (for normal sized books that it, I haven't bought text books).
xzel··on The US military is using online gaming to recruit teens
I played this game as a kid for a lot of hours and knew it was a recruitment tool. I played in lots of small TWL tournaments and was in a clan, so I was pretty involved. While my KDA was pretty good, the D part always sacred the shit out of me, so I don’t think it was a particularly effective tool for recruitment for myself. Pretty well made game though. The map design was great imo; I still remember the map of Mount McKenna. I think I only met one person through the game involved in the military and he was enlisted before its release.
xzel··on Sampler for Mac Touchbars
I agree I think is a good intended set of use cases but I don't think only a single bar was a good idea at all. If I was doing stuff like Ableton or an Adobe product with sliders, I'd want an iPad sized group of sliders, knobs and other settings.

I've found my only real use case is using Poc and launching apps. I find the text auto correct / smilie suggestion useless and borderline distracting and annoying while I'm trying to type (too much flashing).

xzel··on Academic acceleration in gifted youth: a 35-year longitudinal study
The development of 1.5 during those years is huge. The difference between interacting with a 16 and 18 year old are night and day in experience and maturity. But I agree with you this would be incredibly difficult to accurately measure differences with a lack of accelerated students and subjective questions/answers.
xzel··on Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal
Not OP but baked chicken, slow cooked pork shoulder and rice or another grain probably takes about 15 minutes of active work (cook time obviously is longer). Throw some corn or green with that combo and you've got a pretty healthy and balanced set of meals. Make larger portions, buy some re-usable takeout trays and you're on your meal prep jouney. The biggest annoyance with meal prepping is redundancy in your meals but if you're okay with repetition you'll be fine.

I personally air on the side of making large portion of a meat, say chicken, and just making different variations with that pre-cooked meat through out the week. Shouldn't take more than 10 minutes a night with pre-cooked chicken to do something like chicken and pasta, chicken quesadilla, chicken salad, chicken on top of salad, chicken sandwich etc. Unless you're making a multi dish or complicated meal cooking really doesn't take that long.

Last thing, I love doing sous vide and it takes actual prep time down a lot. I'll throw a steak in when I go to work, turn it on while I'm not home and it will be done when I get back; sear it for a minute and it is good to go.

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