Hacker News Reader

nitrobeaston Covid-19 twice as contagious as previously thought – CDC study

I believe Wuhan government eventually went door-to-door to test the population exhaustively.

nitrobeaston Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

I believe Google also bans non-Google file sharing tools like Dropbox or OneDrive from employee’s computers too.

nitrobeaston Army Corps of Engineers to Build Temporary Hospitals in NY

There were convention centers converted to isolate patients in Wuhan too. Basically, Wuhan needed both more hospital beds for people requiring intensive care, and more beds for isolating infected patients with mild symptoms. Only the second kind can be in placed in conventional centers.

nitrobeaston Eyewitnesses describe brutal beatings by HK police

By being more concerned about police brutality in US, which will give totalitarian states less excuse to behave similarly.

nitrobeaston We don't need a Tech Lead

See "conceptual integrity" in The Mythical Man-Month. There needes to be someone who resolves technical conflicts and keeps the design conherent.

nitrobeaston Lee Sedol Beats AlphaGo in Game 4

AlphaGo was in over time in game 2.

nitrobeaston YouTube change served lower-quality video to Firefox 43 for 2 weeks

Interesting ... Because of some incidents Google is evil ... Meanwhile Firefox is not allowed on iOS.

nitrobeaston The sky is not falling – about the supposed end of dynamic languages

Some people may disagree, but Steve Yegge's "political axis" seems relevant here: https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/KaSKeg4v... https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/iuRbQe6E...

I suppose no rationale person believes dynamic language would disappear completely. Also I think both dynamic and statically typed languages exist on a spectrum. It is not very productive to talk in generalized terms like "end of dynamic languages".

nitrobeaston Coding is boring, unless

Fixing bugs in poorly designed/written code is the number one cause of unhappiness for me. Maintaining my own code is fine, at least it is a learning process to see what worked/didn't work in the original design. Instead of letting everyone rewrite the legacy code with a new language/framework, I think the solution should be that each developer needs to maintain the code they write as much as possible. Maintenance work should be properly rewarded and project ownership should be promoted.

nitrobeaston How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math

"Sorry, education reformers, it’s still memorization and repetition we need." This is very true. For example, doing the advanced engineering calculus can often boil down to manipulating polynomial, which are still arithmetic. A person with "understanding" but no fluency in basic arithmetic is setup to fail.

nitrobeaston After raising $50M, Reddit forces all remote workers to relocate to SF

I don't understand why people think working remotely can be as productive as working together under one roof. Unless you are doing things that does not require a team anyway, there are times when face-to-face conversations are necessary to get things done.

nitrobeaston The New York Times’ App Plan Isn’t Working, So It’s Laying Off Staff

The 'pay wall' of NYT is just for show. Use incognito mode to browse as much as you want on nytimes.com

nitrobeaston China bans use of Windows 8 on government computers

It is very likely that the Chinese government prefers Windows 7 to Windows 8. Why the fuss about XP, protectionism?

nitrobeaston Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules

Quote from the linked article, "(net neutrality rules) forbid ISPs from blocking services or charging content providers for access to the network." But that is confusing. ISPs are already charging content providers for access to the network. Netflix and Google need to pay for their bandwidth.

Actually, web neutrality means the ISPs should treat all data in their network equally.