Hacker News Reader

metaphormon New York’s Subways Are Not Just Delayed, Some Trains Don’t Run at All

its more than just that though. it's a legit safety issue. the switches are old and have been breaking down at spectacular rates. if a switch breaks when trains on the line are too close too each other there is a much higher chance for a collision due to one of the trains breaking too soon or too late. spacing them out more evenly reduces the chance of that scenario.

metaphormon Blue Apron Plans to Cut 24% of Staff Barely a Month After IPO

having interviewed at Blue Apron, I can confirm that they very much view themselves as a tech company even though they are not really in the tech business space. The level of Google envy I saw at what is essentially an e-commerce grocery store was insane to me.

metaphormon Blue Apron Plans to Cut 24% of Staff Barely a Month After IPO

I think it means that podcast advertising is an effective means of raising product awareness but the product itself needs to have value and staying power or else it won't result in a sustainable business model.

metaphormon Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

the UX changes weren't the real problem, though they exacerbated the real problem. the real problem was a dramatic change in the content promotion algorithm that de facto transformed the front page of the site (which was much less cuztomizable than reddit's) into a corporate sponsored content billboard.

metaphormon Jeff Bezos Surpasses Bill Gates as World's Richest Person

when pumped out of the ground and put into the holding tank of a giant ocean-going ship it sure is.

but I was referring to hereditary mineral rights, which is really more about political power and the (very expensive) maintenance of an oppressive regime. those mineral rights eventually convert into oil on tanker ships but it's really incredibly precarious and a single political shift (internal revolution, invading army, etc.) makes it all vanish in a heartbeat.

the amount of oil-on-ships wealth that an Arab tyrant has on hand at any given time is relatively modest. most of the wealth is future claims to continue selling that oil, and that's not a very liquid form of wealth at all.

metaphormon Jeff Bezos Surpasses Bill Gates as World's Richest Person

asset liquidity matters though, right? amazon or msft stock are highly liquid. stolen renaissance paintings, giant palaces in the middle of a desert wasteland, and hereditary claims to mineral rights are not very liquid assets.

metaphormon Employees Who Stay in Companies Longer Than Two Years Get Paid 50% Less

I respectfully disagree that you can tell whether or not a person is "capable of stretching himself" or not based on length of stay at a job.

There is an overwhelming amount of outside factors that can dominate those decisions much more than your own personal ambitions. The most important of those would be the needs of your family.

metaphormon Juicero Plans to Lower Prices and Cut 25% of Staff

The plan was always to be Keurig while telling people they were Apple. It didn't work.

metaphormon Ask HN: Why is Bluetooth so unreliable?

NFC has an effective range of about 20cm, bluetooth (and wifi) up to about 50m. these have completely different use cases, and if you're limiting yourself to 20cm range for a semi-permanent fixture (like speakers) you might as well run a wire.

metaphormon Show HN All US doctors ordered by their opioid prescription count

I'd love to see an analysis that finds a good way to try and discover inappropriate prescriptions. Doctors deserve some benefit-of-the-doubt for this stuff because these are legal medications that treat common symptoms. What is the most useful way to discover when a doctor is making too many prescriptions or not screening their patients for appropriateness of prescription?

metaphormon Indie games don't make money

are you single? people with families don't typically have enough time to do what you're doing.

metaphormon Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

I don't want to get into a back and forth with you on this topic so I will politely decline your request.

I just wanted to say that it seems to me like you are speaking about broad generalizations and that is not the same thing as speaking about real people or individuals. Also, that your generalized idea of men is based on the premise that that general man is a wealthy and powerful person, but this is not the case for most men.

metaphormon Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

in a criminal trial the most common form would be an alibi, which is proof that the accused was somewhere else and not in the place the crime occurred at the time the crime occurred.

metaphormon Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

do you honestly believe that there aren't difficult and often unrealistic social pressures put on men?

metaphormon Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

The Susan Fowler article greatly accelerated this process and drew a huge amount of (deserved) media attention. However, Uber has a long history of bad behavior in many different ways. The internal culture being rotten was known-about-but-not-talked-about for a long time, and their history of legally gray and unethical business practices was already a major specter on the company's public image.

metaphormon If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

> seems for the most part overly satisfied with trivia questions and whiteboard problems.

I agree and it is puzzling to me as well. My own CompSci degree as ABET accredited and I did two years worth of internships before working full time. It doesn't translate into a strong credential though. I still get asked to do whiteboard shit, just like everyone else.

I think it's a complicated issue and is in some sense due to the immaturity of the industry (only a couple of decades old, whereas some other professional disciplines are centuries old). In any case I'm glad it's a topic of frequent discussion in the community. It's important and the discussions are usually good ones.

metaphormon If companies interviewed tech recruiters the way they interview programmers

on the other hand doctors are credentialed and software developers aren't. you don't get invited to interview for a position as a doctor unless you have your medical school degree, and all of the associated training that goes with that (residencies, etc.). there is nothing equivalent to that for software development, and in fact a computer science degree is sufficiently abstract/mathy that it's possibly to graduate with one and still not really know how to do practical software development.

metaphormon Elon Musk Publishes Plans for Colonizing Mars

I interpret Musk's interest in this kind of thing as a form of ideological futurism rather than a pragmatic goal. I think he presents the idea of something very far out and very ambitious as a way to try and inspire people to think big and think about developing technology the likes of which we've never seen before.

It's an interesting strategy, but I think it has a major downside too. It strikes many people (me included) as a bit detached from reality and even cold to the concerns of the many people here on Earth that are struggling.

metaphormon America’s new tobacco crisis: The rich stopped smoking, the poor didn’t

*Morlocks [0]

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morlock

metaphormon America’s new tobacco crisis: The rich stopped smoking, the poor didn’t

would add to that, perhaps, "and for foreigners". Tobacco sales in developing countries are huge. China alone keeps them in so much profit that almost don't care what happens in America.

metaphormon I spent 29 years in solitary confinement (2010)

"tough on crime" is an election campaign strategy more than anything else.

metaphormon I spent 29 years in solitary confinement (2010)

incredibly common theme in many pre-Christian myth systems. the good/evil dualism in Christianity is the real aberration, despite its prominence.

one of the more credible hypotheses I've encountered about this phenomenon is that early Christianity adopted many of the positions of Gnostic Manichaeism [0] in order to absorb rival cults.

0- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism

metaphormon Ask HN: My company has been acquired and I'm kicked out. What should I do now?

ah, don't sweat it dude. you're not a huge failure. you've already done much more than most people have attempted at your age and the real truth is that most companies go out of business. as long as you treated people fairly and behaved professionally then you should be proud of yourself.

what kind of work do you enjoy most? you've tried a few different roles now. focus in on the one that feels best. you have a CS background so maybe you want to get back into software development as a programmer.

metaphormon Dr. Bronner's Soap Is Investing Millions into MDMA Research

yes, you can. a psychedelic trip will be different every time but you can very definitely control your mindset and physical setting to make sure your experience is safe and you are free to explore whatever experience comes to you on your own terms.

metaphormon How Propagandists Abuse the Internet and Manipulate the Public [pdf]

I'm partial to Chomsky's analysis of the news media as an institution of propaganda. this video is a good summary of his position

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYlyb1Bx9Ic

metaphormon How Propagandists Abuse the Internet and Manipulate the Public [pdf]

was 4chan ever "liberal" in the sense that the term is used in American politics? that doesn't vibe with my impression of the community there. It's always had a lot of libertarian undercurrents but was really just disaffected and non-partisan until the Trump thing happened.

metaphormon How Propagandists Abuse the Internet and Manipulate the Public [pdf]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvp97SMZc6M

that's the Hicks' bit. similar in tone and content.

metaphormon How Propagandists Abuse the Internet and Manipulate the Public [pdf]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFCMhSzeGuA

this is the bit, I think.

metaphormon How Propagandists Abuse the Internet and Manipulate the Public [pdf]

I've had people get into hair spitting arguments with me over whether or not the clearly manipulative and distorted news reporting style in mainstream publications (NYTimes is a good example) ought to count as fake news. Personally I don't care for the term. I think the traditional term propaganda is on target and suitably broad that it applies to both social media manipulation (fabricated blog posts on your Facebook newsfeed) and traditional media manipulation (overwhelming biases at most news publications).

metaphormon Verizon closes $4.5B acquisition of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer resigns

> And if any CEO should be burned at a stake, shouldn't it be that guy that refused to sell Yahoo for 47 billion to Microsoft?

That was Jerry Yang, a co-founder of Yahoo. And yes, he was "burned at the stake". He was fired from the CEO job within months of tanking that deal.