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digbyloftus

137 karma · joined December 30, 2015

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digbyloftus··on Choose GitLab for your next open source project
Thanks! I'll be sure to do so.
digbyloftus··on Choose GitLab for your next open source project
Should probably go with "if" instead of "when" ;)

Actual question, do you have much Australian based business and do you see yourselves needing account managers there (here) in the near future?

digbyloftus··on Google is banning Flash from its display ads
They do
digbyloftus··on How Wired Is Going to Handle Ad Blocking
You don't support people not giving their work away for free? I could understand the privacy argument but "some people can't afford that businesses product so fuck that business" seems ridiculous.
digbyloftus··on Driving Is Losing Its Allure for More Americans
Cities make it easier for kids to go outside and be kids. The need for car transport that RcouF1uZ4gsC brings up applies to kids as much as adults. It limits who they can interact with down to a few kids from the local street and their activities to those parents are willing to drive them to which harms socialisation even more.

Basic things like seeing a film with friends, playing a sport, or going on a date become way bigger deals than they otherwise need to be. Being the kid that always needed exact locations and times for things to be able to participate was always a huge PITA for me.

I'd say at the very least that parents choosing the suburban life should do so understanding that they're signing themselves up for extreme taxi duty and that their child doesn't really have much power in deciding when things start/end. Actually, nowadays maybe Uber on your kids phone would do the job.

digbyloftus··on GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart
Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be? They can fire him for any or no reason and it's completely ethical. They don't owe him employment.
digbyloftus··on PayPal Starts Banning VPN and SmartDNS Services
Oh yes, all of those bitcoin accepting services.
digbyloftus··on Sydney's fun police have put out the light of the nightlife
It seems to have worked in the sense that not being out at night is a good way to not get punched while out at night. It's basically the most invasive form of keeping safe and one people could easily have implemented all on their own.
digbyloftus··on Improved commenting with Markdown
Writing a public letter to a business (of which you are not a customer) as if your problems are theirs to fix, is one of the most textbook example of "exaggerated sense of one's own importance" that I could possibly imagine. Those people were, and are, clearly not very important to Github at all.
digbyloftus··on Washington Gives $1.3M in Parking Fines During Snowstorm
These fuckwits had advanced warning of the blizzard and still parked in a way to hinder emergency response capabilities. How you can paint them as innocent people who were fucked over is beyond me.
digbyloftus··on You're Not Allowed to Criticize Startups, You Stupid Hater
What? That's the least critical hedging comment they could have possibly made. "some say it's dumb" is their extreme negative? Really?
digbyloftus··on Zcash, an untraceable Bitcoin alternative, launches in alpha
I didn't see anything dystopian about it. Bad behaviour just like the rest of morality is relative if it exists at all. I certainly don't think the ability to sanction behaviour is a boon.
digbyloftus··on Zcash, an untraceable Bitcoin alternative, launches in alpha
It works both ways, anonymous money prevents people from choosing not to accept your own money as much as it does the other way around. It makes the transaction purely about the money, I don't think that's powerless, just reduces people's ability to mind other people's business.
digbyloftus··on T-Shirts Unravelled
Is it as important that kids clothing fits precisely though? I mean, evidently it is to you but I would I would have thought parents would be happy that the kids look decent enough. You even point out their rapid growth so it's not like they're going to be continuously wearing the perfect fit all the time. Buy slightly big and they grow in to it.
digbyloftus··on Why Are Corporations Hoarding Trillions?
We haven't "made life better" since we learned how to make fire, seems odd to think we'd start now. Making shit and making life better are two distinct things. Economic production and wealth creation are just fun games.
digbyloftus··on Uber avoids car pick-up app restrictions in London
>The California-based private-hire company had urged its users to oppose suggestions that had included a ban on apps being able to show where their nearby available vehicles were.

>a minimum five-minute delay between pick-up confirmations being sent out and drivers being able to collect their passengers

Whoa, that's not even trying to be subtle. That's just straight up trying to legislate a required level of crapiness.

digbyloftus··on Is it still possible to get away with a heist?
A bank isn't likely to have $1.2 mil total let alone in $100s.
digbyloftus··on Gilt Groupe Is a Cautionary Tale for Startup Employees Banking on Stock Options
Corporations are just collections of humans, which do pay taxes. The idea that they're a separate entity that is pulling one over us silly humans is ridiculous.
digbyloftus··on All Hollowed Out: The lonely poverty of America’s white working class
Statistical mean would seem like a poor choice in determining average in that case then.
digbyloftus··on All Hollowed Out: The lonely poverty of America’s white working class
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

>The effect of this decision has been to eliminate aptitude tests from the hiring process. During the intervening years, the college diploma has become the "de facto" tool by HR departments to winnow the flood of applications. Many jobs today require a college diploma, while before Griggs the same job did not.

digbyloftus··on Why Big Companies Keep Failing: The Stack Fallacy
The article specifically says it's about knowing the customers needs and that technical skill can just be bought/acquired. How you got "we think companies struggle to move up the stack because of technical difficulty" from that, I have no idea.
digbyloftus··on Tech faces hour of reckoning as fundraising drops, layoffs rise
Is Dropbox really consumer tech? I would have thought businesses would make up the vast majority of their revenue.
digbyloftus··on The Real Problem with Lunch
Other countries are catching up in overweight and obesity but there's rarely data on BMI levels above that. Anecdotally it does seem like the US has much higher rates of super obese people at 50+ BMI. The mobility scooter using, as wide as 2.5 normal people kind. There's a stark difference visiting from here in Australia despite our similar overweight rates.

I don't know if it's because your food is so much cheaper that people who have eating problems/don't care about their health and appearance can afford to crazy, or if it's cultural, but there's a class of super fats waddling around in the US that you really don't see in other countries.

digbyloftus··on Richest 1% will own more than all the rest by 2016
>Do you really think Tom Cruise deserves that much money for what he does?

People want to, and agree to, give him that money. What other measure of 'deserve' could there possibly be?

>Or that the world is better off with that money going to him instead of someplace else?

It doesn't matter. The world will be fine either way. People though? Tom Cruise is a person. The people paying him are people. They evidently think the arrangement is pretty good.

digbyloftus··on A reply to Russell Okung
I'm glad he's brought this up and in a way sort of made it a challenge. I find PG's essays to be very precise in scope and to then try to back that point up with arguments. It's good writing. Seeing people "reply" to him and effectively just make a grand standing post against poverty with the occasional "and this rich guy thinks..." thrown in is imo disgusting.

There's no way people have missed that he doesn't think economic inequality and poverty are synonymous (I kind of feel sorry for him because he sort of has to give them the benefit of the doubt and keep going as if they're just mistaken), it's a core point in his original argument, which means they're apparently fine taking him and effectively throwing him under the bus by making it sound like he's pro poverty.

I'd love to see a reply to him that's intellectually honest and stays on point. Rebuts his arguments, doesn't put words in to his mouth, and acknowledges those that have already come out of it. Sadly amongst the pile I've read, none seem to have tried to do that and instead seem to just be aiming for audience approval with emotional statements.

digbyloftus··on A reply to Russell Okung
If you think there are things people should not be able to buy (political sway) then would it not make sense to focus on those who are both selling this service they shouldn't be and also the ones that are actually buying it? There are plenty of things the average person could afford if we let them, the answer to that wasn't "no one gets any money".
digbyloftus··on Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine
Very likely to be true and I wont disagree! I'm not actually even from the US so I'm unfamiliar with their scope. I disagree with the person I'm replying tos reasoning more than anything. Their objection was of a different nature than yours.
digbyloftus··on Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine
Whichever leads to the best, most efficient medical industry and provides myself as a consumer with the most value.
digbyloftus··on Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine
I mean, the difference between "resist management giving themselves millions while cutting pay for workers" and "price fixing/restrict competition" is just an arbitrary, subjective distinction based on your opinion on how much money people should make. Either way the goal is to get more money for members of the group. If you don't think doctors deserve the inflated value the AMA has captured for them but think that other union workers deserve more money then that's fair enough but practically it's the same game.

There's also a word for what you're doing. A tautology I think? It seems disingenuous to classify unions based on "good" value capture. It creates a position where unions literally can do no wrong because they'll just stop meeting your definition of union.

digbyloftus··on Unethical Growth Hacking from YayView
If you fix your car by slapping together a bunch of junk then yes you most certainly have just "hacked it together". I don't see how you can call this abuse, crudely modifying and creating things is the original and primary use of the term. If anything it's the "high quality, open source programming in pursuit of interesting problems" crowd that's butchering it. "It's just something I hacked together" has never meant "I carefully crafted the shit out of it" except for maybe in a dishonest humblebrag sort of way.
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