Hacker News Reader

josephvon India bans TikTok, WeChat, and dozens of other Chinese apps

Coordination with the US means jobs and economic opportunity for both sides. Coordination with China means gunfights and border tension.

It's pretty simple if you don't try to extrapolate everything to logical extrems. India and US is ally, India and China is rival. Full stop, it ends there. KISS

josephvon Facebook says a bug caused its iPhone app’s inadvertent camera access

Physical controls can be as effective as technical.

josephvon The Enduring Mystery of ‘Jawn,’ Philadelphia’s All-Purpose Noun (2016)

They say this junt "jawn" is unique like anyone cares.

josephvon Rick Steves Wants to Save the World, One Vacation at a Time

This sort of hyper-sensitivity to any negative effects of your actions is absolutely paralyzing, as you clearly demonstrate.

It will keep you from enjoying anything. People believe they shouldn't have kids because "there's too many people". Or spend the $10 on a reusable bottle of water they are going to lose instead of buying the $1 and giving $9 to your cause of choice (charity, church, weed for the homeless).

The only way to really go zero-emissions, which would really benefit everyone (I guess, by this logic) is to just off yourself.

But I'd argue that you could do more good, have more potential to solve these problems you are concerned about, by exposing yourself to things outside your comfort zone. Other places, people, cultures, great works of art and engineering, and rich experiences.

All of the planes you ride on are going to fly anyway, get out there and get it!

josephvon U.S. Firms Are Helping Build China’s Orwellian State

Eastasia certainly wouldn't be the same without Eurasia and Oceana.

josephvon Italy bans unvaccinated children from school

Vaccination doesn't 100% guarantee immunity, so there is always a % that isn't immune. Each disease requires a different % immunity to prevent a wide-spread outbreak, i.e. to provide herd immunity. For particularly aggressive diseases it requires 95ish% immunity to avoid an outbreak.

So with anti-vaxxers increasing from roughly .5% to 1.5% over the last 10 years or so, that introduces a significant increase in the requirement of vaccination effectiveness, to the point where you wonder are we close to herd immunity breaking down.

In places with significant anti-vax sentiments, such as ultra-orthodox religious practices you will get those larger outbreaks of things like measles.

In general I think research indicates in the general populous anti-vaxxer populations are still small and disparate enough as to not impact herd immunity, but the trend has been upward due to the anti-vax trend over the last decade.

[source] am married to an M.D. that specialized in microbiology, recently listened to a good NPR bit about it that dropped the statistics, and I stayed at a holiday inn express last night.

josephvon Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

Haha, this is brilliant. Exempt NBA Star X from all state income tax if they play for the team - that seems completely believable.

Obviously NBA rules relate to tampering would come into play, but it would be a compelling story for the 24 hour sports new cycle.

I've read about athletes at least considering the income tax of a state in their decision, but I'm not sure it's ever been a deciding factor.

josephvon Facebook Referred to Kids as Young as Five as “Whales” for Its Monetized Games

I love the spirit of this comment: Facebook employees as poor pawns to be pitied.

I share the sentiment as a corporate family-oriented programmer from a flyover state that has been heavily recruited by FANNGs. I don't like working for anyone, and being a teensy cog being ground up in a duct-taped together machine like that seems like torture.

josephvon Google Urged the U.S. to Limit Protection for Activist Workers

These comments read like a bunch of low-income retail shoppers defending Walmart because they provide something they otherwise couldn't get.

I think these types of debates are bellwether for programmer/IT professional unionization. These are the exact types of lawsuits brought against organized labor as it was trying to get organized to prevent exploitative behavior.

It's disturbing to see these same anti-organization arguments rehashed simply for a new industry.

josephvon The Yoda of Silicon Valley

He's definately chewbacca.

josephvon Fortnite dev launches Epic Games Store that takes 12% of revenue

Other articles on hn mention correctly that right now in technology monopolies are the norm and anti-trust is dead (maybe a little dramatization there).

The 30% cut from distribution platforms is arbitrary, not based on cost, but rather implicit collusion based on what apple can extract from their flock.

I'd say this Epic launcher is a great exception to this and I hope it sticks.

josephvon What we learned from 3 years of bra engineering, and what's next

https://www.willowpump.com/

These things seem to be fairly new. Not available afaik 4 years ago when my we needed one. I've heard good reviews of the style, but don't know anything about specific brands.

josephvon Building an automatic chicken coop door opener

Cool project, but is it a failure for one of the requirements being that it costed under $50 and title says it costed $100?

josephvon Orangutans are the only great apes besides humans to ‘talk’ about the past

Upvoted for your excellent XKCD reference.

https://xkcd.com/927/

josephvon How to Keep Your Job as Your Company Grows

That's what I was thinking! Enjoy being up and walking around. Being chained to a desk is not always a dream job by any stretch of the imagination. There are very direct mental and physical health ramifications impacts that can only be partially mitigated.

josephvon Fishing for Hackers: Analysis of a Linux Server Attack (2014)

https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espiona...

Honeypots are good fun. This book introduced me to them many years ago at university.

josephvon Despite concerns, FDA approves new opioid 10x more powerful than Fentanyl

For those of us that have had to use opioids for cancer treatment to the point of being addicted, then kicked the habit after treatment, all of the asinine demonization of opioids is absolutely infuriating. I used ate percs like candy during treatment and rehab, then used fentanyl patches to wean off. It was hard, like really hard, but life is hard.

It's not worth it to try and convince anyone that hasn't knocked on deaths door that sometimes you need palliative care in the form of narcotics to make it to your destination, recovery or otherwise.

I'm sorry about your mother, she wasn't bad for using fentanyl or anything else. She did great things with her life, you're proof. Don't let the stupid media or internet SJWs try influence you. After my ordeal I haven't watched TV or the news in years and am much happier for it. Family, work, and video games (or hobby of choice) is all a person needs IMO.

josephvon We Regulate the Wrong Things

I agree, when I lived close to a grocer it was amazing and that is the absolute biggest thing I miss being a suburbanite. Beer runs were so much less complicated and my neighbors annoy me so I could avoid borrowing the proverbial cup of sugar.

I've thought I should open a suburban bodega right in the neighborhood. But with lot sizes being fairly large and households being fairly small, i doubt I would get enough traffic since I couldn't compete with discount grocers and Walmart.

C'est la vie, I bought a muscly convertible to enjoy these interstitial commutes.

josephvon Why did the golden age of the Simpsons end?

My kids have had no trouble screwing up and I try to help them learn lessons. There are many other shows that teach that same lesson without a cartoon cat and mouse filleting each other, dad drinking and bumbling around and choking their kids out.

I love The Simpsons; honestly I like Bob's Burgers more, but both shows live on a line between acceptable and unacceptable, like all adult cartoons do. They will find things that do the same and I won't know about it. But I don't spoon feed it to them.

I already give them all the vidya games in the world so they aren't starved for crude content. Also just living with me is all the crude TV-MA content they can handle. Mom and Dad are sort of fun to hang around (at least for Mom and Dad).

josephvon Why did the golden age of the Simpsons end?

I ravenously consumed The Simpsons for most of my youth and loved it. I watch it now whenever I get the chance and love it, but life happened. I don't like my kids to watch it so they don't grow up Fd in the brain like me. Having a bad kid as a role model I think does impact children.

It's also not the only game in town. Cartoon network quality has gone way way up. I used to watch 3-hour cartoons on Saturday morning, and the simpsons et. al on Sunday night. That was it for cartoons on TV. Grandparents broke out VHS tapes occasionally as well. We didn't have a lot of options so The Simpsons was mind blowing. Not so much anymore.

josephvon Why does sorting in computer science mean ordering rather than categorizing?

I think this is a valid critique of the title. Sorting means whatever it means in a specific context (dewey decimal system, post addresses, etc...).

Most languages are context sensitives, but generalized computing is fundamentally defined by a context free language in which a processing transition can execute and not care was previous states were. This gets blurry with recursion and generics and other syntactic sugar, but fundamentally state changes are still defined by the operation and instantaneous state and not the language itself.

So in our context-free language of generalized computers, sorting and ordering are the same.

josephvon Procrastination is more about managing emotions than time: study

This is 100% true. A functioning and reasonably healthy person can exhibit or be affected by anything in the DSM5 - from hearing voices (God) to alcohol consumption (social lube) to compulsiveness (hard working).

It's only when that person can no longer function in a healthy way that it becomes a mental disorder.

And for many of us we slip in and out of it.

Even activities that are risky, drinking or skydiving, can be a part of a healthy and functional person.

And everyone anecdotes about how they "beat" that by doing some random activity, life is long. Keep beating it, but don't judge those that are affected by it. Just wait a decade and you very well may be the same situation. Life is all about kindness, however you can be kind, do it.

josephvon Bye bye BetterSlack

Obviously GITer bombs

josephvon Show HN: Didyougogo – An Altavista slayer

It's fast! I like the technical detail - index too limited.

Searched Red Dead Redemption 2 - no game info

Searched "bobs" - no bobs

josephvon Why Isn't Debugging Treated as a First-Class Activity?

The omission is interesting only in that it highlights that programming and debugging are one in the same.

Us old folks that have been programming for 20 years don't even separate the two, there is no meaningful distinction. Programming is not a write-only operation (Perl excepted).

If it's an existing project/product, I get it running and find the entry point. If it's new, I write and entry point and get it running. Then I change something, or write something, and debug it. Is it working as expected? Maybe the execution flow isn't what I expected. Why do I always forget to initialize things right. Probably because every language thinks their version of native v. abstract references are fancier.

Blah, I need to get to work cod... debug.... what am I doing today? Ah yea, writing documentation. Fack

josephvon Ask HN: What's the strangest place you wrote code?

I've done it twice, you're wife is a saint to deal with you and your addiction. But they all are because men seem to have zero understanding of how not to be self-obsessed and "in the moment".

Induced vaginal births are horrifically time-consuming though. If she can speak or hold her eyes open, it's not time to go to the hospital (from my experience, i'm not responsible for your baby being born in a taxi, I live in a suburb with multiple major hospitals within 5 minutes. Will Smith is not going to show up and pull that little alien out of you.

josephvon Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punishment for taking breaks

So you have whatever mental model you have dreamed up for zero marginal production costs. Does this zero cost production include zero spoilage during the zero cost logistics to move the zero cost food, water, and shelter?

Of course, we can build all of those things because we'd like it. Zero marginal cost world peace awaits us!

I encourage you to chase this! I also encourage a backup plan.

josephvon Bulgaria played a vital role in introducing yogurt to the West

Turks, coming from the East, would be known to use and consume yogurt regularly, as do so many asianic cultures, in their food for taste and to balance the lit-ass spices (technical term for hot-ass and stanky-ass).

josephvon Google Workers Urge C.E.O. To Pull Out of Pentagon A.I. Project

Turning sand in to grass - this sounds like a great thing doesn't it?

It's for golf courses - there are amazing golf courses in dubai that required genetically modified burmuda grass in a sandy synthetic fertilized substrate. They take huge leaf blowers and cover football fields worth of sand with it, water the HELL out of it, and pretty soon, beautiful grass in the desert.

Grass in the desert is great for everyone, that wants to golf or make money off golfers.

Getting grass where it isn't sustainable is not benevolent.

josephvon Avoid Else, Return Early (2013)

Pragmatic programming has lost. If you aren't a zealot about being pedantic, just move into the old-folks home.