Hacker News Reader

MattyRadon Driving for Uber as an Iraq War Vet

What a great piece that describes the new type existential despair seen in the modern world. How are we so isolated in spite of connectedness? The question of burning time, for money, for... what? How does one come to serve the haves who happened into success and wealth and prestige?

Still though, he makes more money than I do working as a computer engineer, which is a small consolation.

Anyway, outstanding read and I sincerely hope things improve for him and vets everywhere.

MattyRadon Last Task After Layoff at Disney: Train Foreign Replacements

Good point. What is the bare minimum to qualify for "good performance?" What training information is classified as critical and necessary? Some specifics could be easily omitted, I expect. There could be a tinge of satisfaction in crippling your replacement.

MattyRadon Grooveshark Shuts Down

Funny side note, I discovered Less Than Jake on Grooveshark many years ago.

MattyRadon Take Nothing, Leave Nothing: On being banned from the world’s most remote island

Personally I think the first half of the article was fantastic, then it tapered off toward the end. But ultimately, my takeaway is that we should be more considerate in all aspects of our lives about how our actions affect others, which is a good resolution, even if the moral of the article was a bit muddled by the end.

MattyRadon Reno Wants to Be Silicon Valley's Back Office

I graduated from UNR in Computer Science and had the good fortune of finding a great job in Reno. Rent is incredibly cheap, the average commute time to get anywhere is 15 minutes (I80 and US395 intersect the city), there's no income tax, there's every type of recreation you could want within a 45 minute drive... I could go on. Downtown can still appear pretty trashy, like the article states. I suppose that's the nature of having big casinos there, but I hope it is able to clean itself up.

I could sing Reno's praises all day, and I count myself very lucky that I was able to find a good job here. I have incredibly high hopes for the future of this city, a lot of great things are happening!

MattyRadon Amazon Dash Button

Assuming this isn't an April Fools joke, it would be interesting to discuss this idea in the context of a growing shut-in culture. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9265817

MattyRadon Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

Gerard Manley Hopkins: God’s Grandeur

  THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

  Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

  Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

  Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

  And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

  And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—    

  Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

I don't actually liken the poem to god's grandeur... more the seemingly unending bounty of the world, and its perseverance in spite of a harsh and unforgiving universe.

MattyRadon Julian Assange on Living in a Surveillance Society

I like his point here

"Google and Facebook are in the same business as the U.S. government’s National Security Agency. They collect a vast amount of information about people, store it, integrate it and use it to predict individual and group behavior, which they then sell to advertisers and others."

But I'd like to point out an important difference: Google doesn't have the authority to arrest someone (or incite someone else, like FBI or EPA, to arrest someone). The NSA does. Further, the NSA has a vested interest in arresting people to justify its existence.

MattyRadon How Microsoft Appointed Itself Sheriff of the Internet

The exact same legal precedent could be used to seize hotmail.com for all the spam, scams, and viruses floating through it. I am willing to bet the judge was handed a 2 foot tall stack of papers with technical gibberish which she of course, didn't read, but had complete assurance from these slimy Microsoft lawyers that they knew what they were doing. If any other company tried the same move, the judge would dismiss it instantly. But of course, the law can't operate the same way for a 16 person company vs. a 100,000+ person company.

I think this clip fairly accurately summarizes the ordeal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vxEimC3HME

MattyRadon Stop and Seize

I live in Reno, so with Burning Man recently I saw a disproportionate number of traffic stops off the freeway. The interesting thing about Burning Man, however, is that all vehicles are marked by the tell-tale dust from the Playa. Cops can easily identify which cars should be pulled over. I've seen cops rooting around in dust marked cars while concerned Burners watch.

I can't stress enough how important it is to know your rights [1]. Never, ever consent to a search. Never, ever "talk" to police (insofar as to assert your rights). They are not your friends. You are being pulled over because you are being accused of a crime. And all too often they will use word games and intimidation to get you to "cooperate" (forfeit your fifth amendment rights).

Even though Burners might be less likely to have large sums of money in their car (cash money is forbidden in trading at Burning Man), suspicion of drugs is a likely story for a stop and seizure.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkpOpLvBAr8

MattyRadon Ask HN: Should I advise my coworkers against working with my family member?

Reasonable answer. Everyone's job seems to overlap a little at such a small company, but for the most part no, they don't overlap.... I think I've resolved to simply wait until my coworkers ask me about working with her (should happen at some point if things happen to go well for her), then be honest and say how we don't get along, how it would be a negative influence for me.

MattyRadon Notes on the Celebrity Data Theft

As noted by ______1, the hacker did something similar by censoring the photos and offering to uncensor for bitcoin. The difference here is that people sending bitcoin have no guarantee that the photos will actually be released once the bitcoin is sent. They don't have any guarantee that the posted bitcoin address is not an imposter, and the real address is elsewhere. They don't even have a guarantee that the hacker was already caught, thereby wasting their bitcoin. That system is lacking in trust. A dynamic system described above would help mitigate that problem (even though the hacker could reblack-out each photo and tell them to start again, but that would completely demolish any future trust, although it would hardly be considered "stealing" since the percentage paid of each photo was already released).

MattyRadon Notes on the Celebrity Data Theft

While I don't actually have any solid grasp of the code that would be required, I imagine it would be possible to release 1 image to show that one does indeed have a collection of "valuable" photos. Once trust has been established that the person probably does indeed have additional photos, people will be more willing to submit bitcoin.

You overwrite each pixel of each photo with black. You assign every photo a bitcoin address and perhaps give a name describing its content (something kinky, obviously). Each photo has a set amount the person is asking for its release. As bitcoin is sent to each photo's address, more and more pixels are revealed, as a percentage of the remaining bitcoin price.

You can go further by making the first few photos far cheaper the next (potentially more sultry) photos, creating an exponential pricing system that will likely benefit the hacker. Trust is increased as a low cost photos are revealed, demand for more revealing photos increases as trust increases.

Thoughts?

MattyRadon Intellectual Ventures cuts 140 employees from its patent-buying workforce

Kind of eerie when you realize you're looking into the portrait of someone without any conscious or ethics.

I have little sympathy for the employees that got laid off, and am reassured that IV is finding it harder to operate. However, it's a bit disconcerting that they've claimed to "automate" their process.

MattyRadon MathBox 2

The visual representation of calculus, speed, velocity, and acceleration taught me more in 60 seconds than would take in 4 hours worth of lectures. Fantastic! (Makes my laptop catch on fire though)

MattyRadon Navdy: HUD for your car

My senior project in college was very similar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axDyhF1N7hY

Navdy's interface looks quite a bit nicer though, for sure.

MattyRadon The desktop and the developer

I have been using Ubuntu as my sole desktop for the past 5 years (except when I play games on Windows), and have just landed a job that requires I use a Mac. It has been incredibly painful trying to do what is normally trivial in Linux.

But to be fair, I realize that I'm the hardcore Linux user who still goes out of his way tweak every little detail with Compiz and ensure that my keyboard shortcuts are all explicitly created. If others are given the choice between Mac, Windows, and Linux, Mac is the most consistent experience with both hardware and software, and I can regrettably understand their choice. I don't mean to go on a rant about Macs, I just want to mention that I've recently been forced to do subject the author's article.

MattyRadon Growing-ups

When I was a child, I asked my dad if his work was fun. He said, "If it was fun, they wouldn't pay you." I remember that from time to time, because it's true. Something that is fun (relative though "fun" is) doesn't warrant payment.

When my mom asks about my current job, I sometimes repeat that phrase, and she gets all huffy and annoyed that I don't view my current job as enjoyable. Sure, my job is satisfying in small ways, but ultimately I'd rather be doing something else.

I just mention it because my mom and dad show two sides of the generation mentality discussed in the article: the "buckle down and get a job" type, and the "you should do what you love" type.

MattyRadon Can We Learn About Privacy From Porn Stars?

How does a big-name-ish pornstar come across HN?

MattyRadon Ask HN: My boss lowered my salary to make me more motivated

I agree with this. It creates leverage that you wouldn't otherwise have while simultaneously making a statement that you don't appreciate being taken advantage of. Worst case scenario: you never hear from him again, which still sounds like a win.

Also, it reminds me of this: http://www.27bslash6.com/bob.html

MattyRadon Japan to regulate Bitcoin trades, impose taxes

Is anyone else skeptical of the government's ability to effectively tax bitcoin? The scale of doing so both technologically and physically seems far too complicated for such a minute market.

MattyRadon Overstock.com Is Now Accepting Bitcoins

Cool. Thanks!

MattyRadon Overstock.com Is Now Accepting Bitcoins

It's refreshing that now I can spend my bitcoin on things I want! They got it working much faster than expected. Does anybody have any idea how returns would work? Do they just send the original amount of bitcoin to the payer's wallet? Or are returns even possible at this point in time?

MattyRadon Why I want Bitcoin to die in a fire

One of the things I happen to like about Bitcoin is that it will only be as successful as its adoption rate. I think of this as a literal interpretation of voting with you wallet. So if Bitcoin, against considerable odds, is successful (a small possibility, to be sure), Charles Stoss here will be outvoted, and there is nothing he or the government can do to stop it. And in that respect, Bitcoin is its own insurance policy.

MattyRadon China bans new Bitcoin deposits

By "ban", I assume they mean "made illegal." The former of course being a euphemism for the latter. A couple questions come to my mind as such.... How will China enforce such a ban? Can China physically or technologically bar access to Bitcoin deposits?

Regardless of the Chinese government's ability to effectively enforce such a ban, the price of Bitcoin has begun another wild (and fascinating) price fluctuation period.

MattyRadon Bitcoin Value Sinks After Chinese Exchange Move

>"It is not issued by a central monetary authority, it does not have the properties of legal currency and it is not a currency in the real meaning of the word."

Certainly an amusing quote, given the extensive actions to stop the spread of such a non-threatening non-currency.

Regardless of the Chinese government's ability to effectively enforce such a ban, the price of Bitcoin has taken a noticeable dive.

MattyRadon If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We'd Ground Our Fleet

Would anybody be surprised, even sympathetic, if the families of the deceased joined Al Qaeda as a direct result of this? Americans killed their friends and family on a sacred day, and nothing would be more appropriate than seeing they pay for it. Such an atrocity is almost comical when you think that the reason it occurred was to stop Al Qaeda, ends up bolstering it. It's appalling on so many levels.

MattyRadon North Korea 2013 – A travel journal

I think the author has a bias to show North Korea in a positive light (the pristine pictures, jabs at commercialism, readiness to accept a tour as fact), or, at least, tries to show a generous understanding of such a country and its culture. Personally, I think this does a disservice to actual testimony from former citizens [1][2].

[1] http://gawker.com/how-i-escaped-north-korea-479759525/@ParkJ...

[2] http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201306/kim-jong-i...

MattyRadon Bitcoin Reaches 1000 USD

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability#Storage

MattyRadon Bitcoin approaching $1000

The features you just described are equally applicable to different kinds of metals/alloys. Arguably, other metals have even more practical applications. Why shouldn't those be more valuable than gold? In addition, the practical applications of gold you've just listed are, I expect, not what gold is normally used for. Economies, hopefully, aren't defined by whether their currency can make space equipment or electronics (especially since those are modern developments that predate the value in gold). So while what you've just said is true, it still doesn't fully answer the question.