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kerryfalkon Anxiety and burnout: why kids are consumed with worry

A therapist. No joke. In my case it _seems to be_ a coping mechanism for anxiety. I'm so afraid that I force myself to be successful. It goes under the radar because it's seen as healthy to the outside world, but inside is turmoil.

It was put best to me: Don't tell the dog it's not a chicken, we need the eggs.

kerryfalkon Fintech startup Plaid raises $250M at a $2.65B valuation

The developer pays for that access. The developer is a third party. They're buying transaction data.

It's explicitly stated within their sales page and directly contradictory to the statement he made above.

kerryfalkon ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

We didn't have Fortnite but we had many other venues for entertainment on computers: MUDs, Ultima, DOOM, Duke Nukem 3D, Wolfenstein, Wing Commander, etc. etc. The list goes on.

My early family life resembled the parent's. The difference in my case and related to your point wasn't the absence of distractions it was to get at them I had to learn how to make the damn computer work. I once tricked my 286 into thinking it was a 386 so that I could install Windows 3.1. All for the purpose of... playing solitaire. Yeah, that's how bored I was.

I'm not even sure I could replicate doing that today. As a 9 year old I was better with a rudimentary BIOS than I am today with a modern one. I'm pretty sure it was because there was a barrier between me and what I wanted and the only way to get it was to figure out that horrendous system.

kerryfalkon Ask HN: YouTube down?

warning Reddit style comment ahead

Woah. This thread just hit me in a - ridiculously - profound way.

The day the Internet died.

kerryfalkon How Sweden is building the world’s second-longest road tunnel

Also, Sandvik, Copco or Volvo don't produce a TBM.

kerryfalkon Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

I think you've missed this one - the typical long-haul truck driver drives somewhere far enough away that they can't return home and must stay overnight (sometimes sleeping in their trucks) before they can drive again.

This system seems to indicate that the automated trucks do the long hauls between cities and the human drivers do the shorter hauls within/around cities.

If that's the case, this is a good thing.

kerryfalkon The growing body of evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds

They do if they're paid spiffs on them.

kerryfalkon School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program

We are not great at mining.

Fun fact: the manufacturing industry has been able to obtain machine utilization at nearly 100%. Mining is in the 40% range.

kerryfalkon School of Mines Wants to Launch the First Space Mining Program

Can you define what you mean by not spending a lot of resources on Mining?

A significant part of the world’s GDP is in mining and mining and its subsidiary industries (manufacturing for example could not exist without mining) contributes something like 60-70% of the world’s GDP.

We do not have vast excess supply. There are likely many deposits left to be found but it’s widely accepted that the easy resources have been found and we must go deeper to find more. Exploration over the last couple of years has not been invested in and the trove of known resources has been dwindling.

Mining space is impractical due to costs (there are a lot of cost savings to still be had on Earth).

Source: I work for one of the world’s largest suppliers of mining equipment and am heavily involved in the mining market in Canada and peripherally the rest of the world for hard rock mining.

kerryfalkon Facebook Is the Junk Food of Socializing (2015)

That's not just the tech industry. I've never worked in a place that it doesn't happen. I've uncomfortably watched it in the past but took a hard line when a female coworker's first question to me about my new hire was: "Is she hot?"

I responded rather abruptly and forcefully so that everyone within earshot could hear: "She's quite good at what she does."

kerryfalkon Buying time promotes happiness

Canada's rural roads (read: most of Canada's roads) are already mostly two-lane.

kerryfalkon Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

Higher status fliers are allowed to take guests with them into priority boarding. I do this frequently with friends and colleagues who don't fly much.

kerryfalkon Air carriers are still failing people with disabilities

This is just a guess but I fly a _lot_ (~40 flights so far this year). My guess is that the software probably did its job, the gate agents are often just automotons and don't really check anything other than your boarding zone.

kerryfalkon Astronomers Have Found a Star Orbiting a Black Hole at 1% the Speed of Light

Wait. What? A star more massive than a black hole?

I must be missing something here. Once something reaches the mass of a black hole, it becomes a black hole. No? How is it possible for a mass to be greater than a black hole but not a black hole? Mass over distance?

kerryfalkon HSBC CEO Says Bankers Generating 20% of London Revenue May Move

Come to Winnipeg. ;)

kerryfalkon Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

A friend of mine has been doing this for many years. I have bought a lot from him, and he's not cheap. I know he could make a lot more if he worked on his marketing a little bit, but I'm not sure he wants to.

https://www.instagram.com/madeinzaidasbasement/

Anyway, I love that there are more people doing this kind of stuff. Good luck!

kerryfalkon Uber’s self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco

Agreed. I don't think the problem in winter driving is the speed. It's anticipating what the hazards are and how to avoid them.

You - and the other drivers on the road - have less control at all speeds and are always much closer to the limit of traction. Driving on winter roads is a lot like racing a car on a track with other drivers - everyone is near the limit of traction and a hazard can present itself very quickly. Having the right reaction at the right time helps, but planning ahead is more important. Daily driving in summer months is benign in comparison.

kerryfalkon Investing for Geeks

I'm curious why you would have that impression and why you think investing is the way to achieve those things.

kerryfalkon People in Los Angeles Are Getting Rid Of Their Cars

1) the city isn't built for biking. It's long distances between where people work and their homes. Not many live downtown like other large cities. 2) you can only do it for six months of the year. The other six are too cold.

kerryfalkon People in Los Angeles Are Getting Rid Of Their Cars

Don't know where the parent is from but I live in a largish Canadian city. Using a bike for primary travel is not viable except for short leisure/weekend errands. I even live in the part of town where biking would be the most viable.

kerryfalkon Everything I Am Afraid Might Happen If I Ask New Acquaintances to Get Coffee

Relax more. Yoga did it for me.

kerryfalkon Millennials Don’t Use Credit Cards Because They Have No Money

$1000/year is a very low amount to consider regular use, I would think.

As others have stated making money off of the merchants is part of their business model. At $1k/year I wouldn't be surprised if that puts you into negative territory.

kerryfalkon Employee 1: Yahoo

I've seen this happen in a couple of industries and have joined two companies at the start of the reorg/turnaround. There is a lot to do as until the pressure is on a lot gets ignored and runs inefficiently.

It's a different kind of challenge but just as fun.

kerryfalkon Investing Returns on the S&P500

I wouldn't put my whole portfolio in it but I'm not really worried about being too tied to the industry I work in. That might also be because it's mining. Mining is a large portion of the world's GDP (estimated to be in the range of 45-60% either directly or as a supplier to others). If mining as an industry suffers, we're all probably in a bit of trouble.

kerryfalkon Investing Returns on the S&P500

To answer your first question: be a part of it, either as a consumer or a producer.

My professional life now revolves around mining. I'm confident to know who to invest in and who not to.

My personal life centers around various hobbies - I'm confident I could choose a few companies in those spaces to invest in. Unfortunately, most of those are well performing private companies.

kerryfalkon The problem with reinforced concrete

My experience within the North American precast concrete industry is its almost unanimously over-engineered. However, I am not a Structural Engineer.

kerryfalkon The problem with reinforced concrete

That's a bit misleading. Yes, new construction must at least meet the building code. But it's not like it's been designed to be just enough. There's a heavy safety factor in the codes. In some cases they work to reduce the code because it's too much.

kerryfalkon Blackbird, a car rig that creates photo-real CG cars [video]

Parent's point was that a single video couldn't be used to sell to multiple manufacturers, because the wheelbases are different. You would have to adjust the vehicle and shoot a new video for each new model.

kerryfalkon Blackbird, a car rig that creates photo-real CG cars [video]

I've seen Formula SAE cars do that. You can indeed make that happen. In that car it could be as simple as reducing the front spring rates and softening the shocks while putting a stiffer roll bar in the rear.

kerryfalkon Blackbird, a car rig that creates photo-real CG cars [video]

They state in the video that they can adjust the suspension (I imagine this is more than just spring rates and shock stiffness but they didn't confirm). Watching the videos I was actually impressed that it seemed to accurately model the difference between a mustang and a corvette (I am a fairly serious "car guy"). The thing that got me was an Aveo spinning the rear tires... They didn't state if they could change the drive wheels. In most ads I would guess this wouldn't matter much.