HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

TheOperator

1,061 karma · joined January 11, 2019

submissionscomments
TheOperator··on Weighted blankets might ease insomnia and anxiety
Aspie is usually not considered derogatory... more casual and friendly. Some may not like the word but it doesn't have any sort of sinister connotation. I see pretty much every synonym for Autism or Aspergers being used derogatorily online.
TheOperator··on Smart People Should Read Fewer Books and Listen to More Podcasts
I'm in the top percentile of reading speed but my comprehension is average. It's not that I'm trying to read fast I just do. I don't know if more wpm means you're taking in more information. I guess it's useful for skimming for spaced repetition type learning techniques.

Generally I find I learn faster from reading regardless but I can listen to podcasts in situations where I can't read. E.G. doing a mindless repetitive task.

TheOperator··on PowerToys: Windows system utilities to maximize productivity
Meh I think VScode is a bit overcomplicated and heavy compared to notepad++ to be used as a default for every machine. I don't find VScode that compelling until you really tinker with it a bit as well which makes me feel like it's better suited as an installable program.

PowerShell ISE is pretty sluggish and honestly not very good and gets included on every machine though.

TheOperator··on Altruism Isn’t Always Attractive
I've been taking money from government, family, or wealthy friends most of my life. Yet I've also given more than I've received to most of the friends I've known. I've thought much about how selfish or generous I was. You can get really cynical and say that altruism doesn't exist at all if you really get cynical and that people are just trying to fire off pleasure receptors in their brains.

Ultimately though yes people who give to others are altruistic. Some people you will give money to will keep every penny, some will give away every cent they can. The former are selfish the latter altruistic and there is no need to overcomplicate things.

I've only become more self-sufficient over time and today am a net "giver". Did I just become less selfish over time? No I've actually started valuing selfishness MORE over time because it became more appealing as I became stronger. Focusing on results confuses things because people in bad situations CAN'T be as giving as somebody in a good one. Somebody in a good situation can be generous enough to change people's lives without any meaningful personal sacrifice.

A person who is a taker and has no desire to stop being one is not truly altruistic though. Selfishly taking from others and being performatively charitable is selfishness in the veil of altruism. The desire to be seen as the "real giver" is also selfish.

TheOperator··on Altruism Isn’t Always Attractive
This is a huge asterisk. It's hard to generalize the moral leanings of the entire population from mechanical turk. This study really only applies to a specific population of people.
TheOperator··on President Trump Tweets Sensitive Surveillance Image of Iran
He shared pictures of their damaged space center? I don't think NPR understands what "sensitive surveillance" is or is clickbaiting.

He definitely shared surveillance but it's not as if everybody and their mom didn't know the US had these capabilities.

TheOperator··on Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore
I felt the Damore affair exposed a perverse situation. Essentially anybody denying that there were an equal number of women equally inclined towards and capable of performing in a certain industry is used as proof of systemic discrimination. Leaving that uncontested also proves systemic discrimination since there are less women in the field proving the sexism. Then when people get upset that they're being discriminated against and lash out that also proves the sexism. Yet when I talk to just about every ordinary person on the street there is just about nobody who believes women and men have a 50:50 inclination towards all types of work besides fringe egalitarians.

If an honest discussion cannot take place that yes women are discriminated against, but that yes men and women DO in fact differ, then affirmative action will inevitably stop being about stopping sexism and start being about forcing equity as time goes on. You would have to apply a LOT of oppressive systemic sexism and force a whole lot of people male and female into jobs they're bad at and unhappy with to fix inequity in tech. Currently the reaction to people pointing out the looming problem is to fire that autistic employee for sexism and for the CEO to make a public apology.

Damore was just ahead of his time. Affirmative action hasn't distorted tech enough to destroy itself yet.

TheOperator··on ‘They Get Fired All the Time. And They Have No Idea Why’
I drop "Per our discussion" PURELY to put things on the record for auditing/CYA reasons. You say "it's an expression of deep frustration with a tinge of insult at it's target."

No It's business not personal. It's literally just saying that I informed you about whatever issue. I do this to inform my team that you've already been informed about an issue and you don't need to be bothered again, to trace back to where something went wrong if an incident occurs, and to protect myself by proving that I did my job.

Sure you can use "per our discussion" maliciously but it's not always like this.

TheOperator··on ‘They Get Fired All the Time. And They Have No Idea Why’
Life is indeed not fair. If a person has to interact with two equally good people, but one needed accomidation, they would prefer the company of the other. Some get some value out of accomidating others but even then you end up in a relationship with an inequal power dynamic.

You either minimise the burdens you create for others and maximize your strengths or you live a lonely unemployed life dependant on others. Just solving even one communication issue can earn you goodwill with every single person you interact with.

TheOperator··on Twitter locked my account for a nine year old tweet
I don't agree. Wartime cartoons are vile yet we rarely censor them because of the historical value.

I do think that going back a decade with an algorithm and getting people to clean up tweets that likely match a regex filter is whitewashing and it does make twitter a less valuable historical resource. It's a totally different argument from the normal you should be able to say what you want - because I would support censorship of such tweets in the present.

TheOperator··on AMD EPYC processors come to Google, and to Google Cloud
Athlon 64 didn't kill Intel.

Don't underestimate a King like Intel that's backed into a corner. Lots of dirty tricks to play and lots of time to come back.

TheOperator··on Employers are mining the data their workers generate
Open offices have the benefit mostly of cutting costs as less floorspace is needed but they're on average a less productive and more stressful environment for the employee. The 90s cube farm was already pretty short on privacy and the open office is even more extreme.

From what I've seen people who work in open offices try to find ways to work somewhere quieter when possible.

If open offices are worth it entirely depends on if saving on rent or having more productive employees is more worth it. Generally I see a trend towards open office + shared semiprivate spaces. Like meeting rooms or phone booth like cubicles with doors.

TheOperator··on New 2019 MacBook Air features a slower SSD than 2018 model
When the best value option was always cracking the air open, putting the SSD on a shelf in case you ever needed to return it, and throwing in a new one. A cheap QLC drive is likely sufficient for any workload you would do on a MBA.

Oh no... Apple is providing better value. Let's be mad at them for good reasons like having a poor keyboard on a device designed around typing.

TheOperator··on Alan Cooper on the “10x” Programmer
Autism. So text based communication isn't impaired. Also led me to spend a lot of time on the computer so I naturally got better at using them. I send a lot of emails at work and my co-workers will usually try and deal with walkups. Writing is a strong point for me.

There's little problems with communication like having the emotional intelligence to tell when your co-workers are having a hard time and when to back off and treat them differently. I lack that which puts extra stress on them. I tend to say too much and make my team lose face and cause us political problems. So I try to compensate by doing such a good job my co-workers won't be under as much pressure to work hard and my team will be doing such a good job we won't get in shit.

TheOperator··on Alan Cooper on the “10x” Programmer
>The 10x programmer is essentially a libertarian concept: That is, they do it all by themselves because they don’t recognize how much is done for them by others.

I'm finding myself meeting a lot of "10x" descriptors. I'm not doing 10x the work but I'm definitely doing the work of the next two highest performing colleagues put together.

I also see myself putting burdens on my team. My communication, teamwork, and managerial skills are poor and always will be. Yet I always seem to do things technically that makes people look at me like I discovered fire. For me to say I didn't outperform my colleagues would be effectively to say I had no value as an employee since there would be nothing to compensate for my shortcomings. There have been meetings about me where everybody except me was in the room and I was talked about and the only reasons the team decided not to fire me was my performance and work ethic.

It makes me feel really bad reading all the response to high performers that aren't well rounded like they are inherently arrogant toxic drags on a team. There's nothing wrong with having an employee with a lopsided skillset in a team that can support somebody like that. I think seeing such employees as inherently toxic, or seeing them as a holy grail. They're like artillery; only effective with support.

TheOperator··on Data Still Dominates
I can tell you process first thinking is hugely important in large business because there is usually already a process and it is incredibly costly in terms of political capital and job security to deviate from a long existing enterprise process.
TheOperator··on AMD Zen 2 Microarchitecture Analysis: Ryzen 3000 and EPYC Rome
AMD on mobile seems like a big yawner to me. Even if they do get the fastest CPU withzen2 mobile release the issue is that their mobile chipset still has less features and drains more battery juice.

ARM on mobile is the real story.

TheOperator··on AMD Zen 2 Microarchitecture Analysis: Ryzen 3000 and EPYC Rome
Intel doesn't need to do it forever. They need to hold out for Intel 7nm slated for 2021 and they need 7nm to be good. From a zero sum monopolist perspective it makes a lot of sense for Intel to be hamstringing AMD here.

What Intel needs to be careful about is while they fend off AMDs attacks in desktop/server also need to keep an eye on ARM coming after them on mobile. How long until Linux based Chromebooks come with Qualcomm CPUs like 7cx become standard? The chips are better than Intels low TDP offerings so long as they don't have to emulate x86_64. They could spend all their money on a phyrric victory crushing AMD only to lose a different market.

It's a tough job being king with upstarts always after your neck.

TheOperator··on YouTube bans content “showing users how to bypass secure computer systems”
Who cares about 97% of society? They can enjoy their shit.
TheOperator··on The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition
Every single example of zero sum thinking the author used was of whites and men trying to protect their own interests though zero-sum thinking which I found interesting. The author also seems to ignore that altruistic policies which could garner majority groups indirect benefits are themselves based on zero-sum thinking.

When I hear people justify affirmative action policies and racial and gender quotas some of the most frequent stats I heard bring up is relative income levels, relative employment levels, relative everything. Essentially the argument is based around the idea that "majorities' succeeding must have come at the expense of other groups. Even in say... a field like computing in America which is an economic juggernaut that popped up from nowhere which funnels money into the country... the very fact that more White/Asian/Indian men have gotten more jobs than other groups is framed as a crime against those other groups when this is not obvious. Specific needless discrimination and bias is brought up to bring home an argument that majority groups have been playing a nepotistic zero-sum game to their benefit and others and the greater good of societies detriment by keeping talented people with diverse perspectives down. Which isn't an obviously wrong argument yet the solutions on how to fight against this issue like affirmative action are fundamentally couched in zero-sum thinking. People who oppose it do not have zero-sum bias although they are arguably bias towards selfishness. Those are not the same thing.

I don't believe the author made his argument very well. He's confusing zero-sum bias with other types of bias. Singling out white men in all his examples also makes him come off as acting as if it's one group which has the problem which is unlikely to persuade anybody that it's personally wrong for them to engage in zero-sum bias.

P.S. Is zero-sum thinking truly irrational with the future repercussions of population growth and global warming? Time will tell.

TheOperator··on Kuo: Apple to include new scissor switch keyboard in MacBook
The mac chiclet keyboards weren't the best or the worst but these recent keyboards are awful.
TheOperator··on I’ve Picked My Job over My Kids
So has most of western society. Thus the birthrate cratering. Since this woman has two kids she's picking kids over job more than most people. She's simply more honest than most about the whole thing.

I find the western disinterest in raising their own children (and having them) fascinating. There seems to be a widespread ideal of trying to leave a legacy through deeds rather than through your own children. Much of the right wing is agitated at the whole thing because this is gradually reducing the population of an ethnic group they're quite fond of.

TheOperator··on Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client
The man launched the Macbook Air with ONE port. He had to be convinced that it needed 2 ports.
TheOperator··on Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client
Yeah the iPad Pro is the one product stack I like in Apples stack.
TheOperator··on Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client
Lmao disappearing ports didn't start after Jobs died. Jobs had a vandetta against ports.
TheOperator··on Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client
I REALLY don't see Apple as leading the charge on USB-C. I see them as a laggard given their refusal to put a USB-C port where it's most useful - on their phones. They also weren't the first to put the ports on their laptops.

Just because they ship a laptop with 4 USB-C TB ports and nothing else doesn't mean they're driving USB-C adoption nearly as much as say Samsung or Huawei. If anything because they literally don't use the same port across different types of devices unlike other phone/laptop sellers... They're discouraging USB-C adoption and making dongles more appealing since you will still need dongles if you're using all Apple even if you have USB-C native stuff.

Apple aren't pushing people towards expensive new standards they're just making consumer unfriendly decisions. Making it so you can't use USB-A does not mean you're making it easy to adopt USB-C... They make adopting USB-C unnessecarily painful.

TheOperator··on Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client
It's not baffling to me. Usb-A isn't appropriate for small form factors. USB-C is. Why can't I plug the same things into my phone that I can plug into my computer? I'm already phasing out USB-A simply because I think a device you can only use on your phone with a single is limited. I used to carry around a laptop to do network diagnostics... I've realised you can literally do the same crap from your phone by using USB-C dongles... and the form factor is actually better.

Mind you Apple seems to be missing one of the main practical advantage of USB-C by slapping a lightning port on their phones thus ensuring donglegeddon. This drives me insane. Apple for all the puffery about giving consumers what they don't know they wanted is instead giving consumers an inferior choice that ensures lock-in and keeps vendors happy.

TheOperator··on Jony Ive to form independent design company with Apple as client
Apples design has been a big yawner for a few years now. Apple watch and MBPr impressed me. Since then? Seems like the design had actively getting worse since 2015 I.E. MBP with touchbar.

The Mac Pro and Apples new display don't look terrible to me but the cheese grater aesthetics aren't amazing either and it's a bit of a rehash of the Powermac G5. There was also that charger they cancelled.

Maybe apple should consider going back to their playful aesthetic? Aluminum and glass is just so... Yawn

TheOperator··on I Shouldn’t Have to Publish This in The New York Times
I disagree hugely and have seen a massive move towards the decentralization of media. Which is exactly what's causing a rise in extremism. How does a more diverse media environment NOT lead to more extremism by its very nature? It means people have more access to more extreme views. Extremism is a double edged sword, tends to accelerate societal progress but tends to result in more loons mucking things up.

New York Times as society's moral arbiter will never happen again. I'm not sad either. For all this high minded talk about protecting people from extremism I'll never forget how much blood they have on their hands from back when they reported fake news that helped sell the Iraq war. That has killed way more people than the rise of extremism has. Their FUD about how we have to break up the NYTs competition doesn't sway me.

The NYT also loves extremism so long as it's the kind they approve of. Neo-victorian social media lynching of men accused of sexual indiscretions? Well they're on board with that because it advances women's rights and the collateral damage is exaggerated anyways.

TheOperator··on The New Raspberry Pi Is Basically a $35 Desktop Computer
$55 once you add a useful amount of memory but all the same it's genuinely functional even for light internet usage. Pretty impressive stuff. Wintel is headed for an inevitable death at the extreme low end because at this point the experience you get for 50 odd bucks and a used monitor, keyboard, and mouse is better on ARM+Linux.
← PreviousPage 9 of 15Next →