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nonchalance

962 karma · joined July 24, 2013

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nonchalance··on How Fat May Hurt the Brain, and How Exercise May Help
> If you're already fat, you're pretty much fucked.

That's not true, and that's a mentality that justifies self-destructive behavior. I used to be overweight but turned it around a few years ago, and in my case it boiled down to fixing some incredibly unhealthy habits

1) better sleeping habits. I used to go to sleep at 3-4 AM, now I force myself off of electronics by midnight and read a book or write until I doze off. Nowadays, when I first get up in the morning, I roll out of bed and do some pushups to avoid the crawl back to bed.

2) better eating habits. Eating breakfast is probably the best thing you can do for your diet. I found that I was eating much more later in the night, so as I shifted my sleeping pattern I also shifted my eating pattern (eating much more at breakfast and lunch and much less at dinner).

3) better exercise. It started with simple things: going to the grocery store, rather than waiting for the closest parking spot, I would park at the far end of the lot and walk the extra N steps; after a few months, I purchased a collapsable cart and just walked the mile from my house to the store. And bit by bit I would try to increase activity.

Obviously everyone's experience is different, but please don't propagate the idea that overweight people can't lose weight

nonchalance··on Braintree is giving $50k in processing to every startup
69% of statistics are made up on the spot :P

The quoted number is plausible insofar as many vendors offer free shipping with purchases over $X

nonchalance··on Braintree is giving $50k in processing to every startup
The monthly fee makes it unappealing for small volume customers, and the per-transaction fee makes it unappealing for large volume customers. I'm guessing there's some intermediate range, when you are negotiating the final deal, where it's comforting to have that "flexibility".
nonchalance··on The GitHub Developer Program
Not sure why you were downvoted. A perfectly reasonable growth strategy would be to limit API requests for applications based on a free plan (and progressively increase the limit based on the plan chosen)
nonchalance··on The GitHub Developer Program
> In order to register for the developer program, you must be on a paid plan.
nonchalance··on Mozilla is investigating why Dell is charging to install Firefox
If they really did create two sets of disk images based on presence of Firefox, Dell could argue that the price is not for the software but for other differences between the disk images.

Note that I'm not arguing about the spirit of the actions, but merely about whether Mozilla actually has a case here

nonchalance··on Mozilla is investigating why Dell is charging to install Firefox
.. or that IE comes with Windows and Google pays to include Chrome in Dell computers. For example, here's a 2009 note involving Sony: http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/sony-defaults...
nonchalance··on Bitcoin exchange CEO found dead in Singapore
It hasn't been ruled a suicide, according to WSJ:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/02/27/american-ceo-of-singa...

> “I was informed by the Singapore police about her death,” Abrams told The Wall Street Journal Thursday. “The cause of death is still under investigation.”

nonchalance··on Found it on TechCrunch. Reads like a markov-chain-generated series of buzzwords
relevant: http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/
nonchalance··on Mozilla is investigating why Dell is charging to install Firefox
I think there's a different force at play here:

When the software comes with the computer, you can turn around and complain to Dell about the software. There is someone you can call, and generally it's rolled into the phone support contract.

When the software is installed afterwards, you don't have the same ease of complaining. Dell can argue that Firefox somehow messed up your computer.

That is a convenience many people are willing to pay for. Whether they would pay the 16£ is a different question

nonchalance··on Mozilla is investigating why Dell is charging to install Firefox
The problem is that Mozilla's policy applies to distribution but not necessarily to installation. Since this is a legal issue, the details are very important.

In this case, the process of ensuring that a functioning version of Firefox resides on the machine involves:

1. Transferring the Firefox software to the machine

2. Explicitly preparing the machine so that the Firefox software can be run (in this case, installing Firefox)

The Policy only applies to the first item. No part of the policy refers to the second action, and it's fair game for Dell to charge a fee for the labor associated with installing the software (they cannot, of course, charge a fee for the part of the process where the software is distributed to the machine).

If this sounds like nitpicking, welcome to the world of law

nonchalance··on Mozilla is investigating why Dell is charging to install Firefox
> Dell has responded saying that this practice is okay because the company is charging for the service and not the product.
nonchalance··on The Mission of Tesla
It's about future likelihood, not prior probability, and the fact that an issue was discovered means that the likelihood is much higher than if it were some isolated incidents.

To put it differently, if it were entirely random, the premiums would not change, but if there were a systemic problem (which appears to be the case here) the premiums should change to reflect the risk

nonchalance··on The Mission of Tesla
I brought up the same point last week (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6703967) and the Model S appears to be 25x more likely to catch on fire: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6704111
nonchalance··on The Mission of Tesla
You aren't looking at the whole picture. In fault states, the insurance company would have to pay out to the other party in the case of an accident. That money needs to come from somewhere, namely the premiums, which is why they go up after there is reason to believe it could happen again. This isn't about emotions or ethics but rather cold logic
nonchalance··on The Mission of Tesla
That logic makes sense if you assume the only incidents are single-car. When this happens near other cars and is deemed to be the factor behind a multi-car accident, the insurance company still has to pay out for the other participants (unless you are in a no-fault state). I would argue that, regardless of the PR spin and warranties, unless Tesla takes liability for entire accidents I would expect insurance rates to skyrocket
nonchalance··on The Mission of Tesla
> Unfortunately, they love "the fall of the guy" even more.

Tesla went out of their way to flaunt the safety features of the car, alleging a 5.4 NHTSA score when the agency explicitly said that they don't issue scores that high. Tesla said they had the safest cars on the road, and this is the eventual result (people actually expect it to be safer).

IMHO the reaction is entirely appropriate given Musk's and Tesla's behavior up to this point. If Musk and Tesla weren't flaunting their safety claims, this wouldn't be a significant issue

nonchalance··on The perils of mixing open source and money
Once an open source project has enough traction, there is generally little need for outside donations (as companies that use the product will hire people that focus on using and improving the product). The challenge is making that cross-over from hobbyist to professional project, and that is when money is helpful.

Debian had funding at the right time, crossed the rubicon and now has enough momentum to continue. Not all projects share the same luxury, and I view the funding as an attempt to make projects more professional

nonchalance··on Bank Of America Promoting Bitcoin To Its Business Customers
Strictly speaking, it's a community blog post. The author, Touchpoint, probably paid BOA to put the post up there: https://smallbusinessonlinecommunity.bankofamerica.com/peopl...

I guess we've found the next forbes.com

nonchalance··on The Narcissism of Small Code Differences (2008)
The first 3 digits of a zip code represent the sectional center facility code, the smallest of which is 005. One would assume that 00501 is the smallest zip code (which apparently maps to HOLTSVILLE NY )

http://pe.usps.com/text/LabelingLists/L002.htm#xd_L002

https://tools.usps.com/go/ZipLookupAction!input.action

nonchalance··on Jenkin developers accidentally do "git push --force" to over 150 repos on github
The old-school way (cronjob + tarball) works well.

A modern alternative is only allow a bot to write to the central repo. As an example, the rust guys use a bot: https://github.com/mozilla/rust/pull/10403

nonchalance··on The Narcissism of Small Code Differences (2008)
I'd argue that, since the comment regards valid input, the note should appear at the top.
nonchalance··on The Narcissism of Small Code Differences (2008)
> it was only supposed to pre-pend one or two zeros when importing zip codes from CSV files. Anything with fewer than three digits is supposed to be an invalid code

The true problem here lies with the poor choice of function name on the part of the original author and lack of commentary. The name "formatted_zip_code" automatically primes people to expect that you passed a (possibly mal-formed) zip code and the function should format it properly. Under that metric, the original code was indeed deficient and should have been changed. Whether it retained the original style is secondary, but there were clear functional deficiencies.

"Anything with fewer than three digits is supposed to be an invalid code" is not reflected in the code (why does it return digits and not trigger an error there?) and apparently there are no comments, so it should be no surprise that it needed to be fixed.

nonchalance··on From a Model S owner in Tennessee
> old Subaru Justy whose floor pan had been rusting for years

Now, if Tesla S floor pans never rust, then I'd agree with your conclusion.

nonchalance··on From a Model S owner in Tennessee
This was noted two days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6692051

This is a general trend though: Tesla's overreach regarding the NHTSA rating was on the front page for more than a day, whereas NHTSA's statement regarding Tesla's misinterpretation was not even on the front page for a few hours.

nonchalance··on From a Model S owner in Tennessee
When Tesla does it, it's lauded as bold; but when the same thing is done by Steve Jobs (antennagate), it's derided
nonchalance··on From a Model S owner in Tennessee
I'd point out that those innuendos are based on manipulative statistics: the standard is comparing the rate of car fires, but most of those 250 million cars are far older than Tesla Model S (decades as opposed to months old). A proper apples-to-apples comparison would look at new cars (within a year, lets say) and compare those rates.
nonchalance··on From a Model S owner in Tennessee
Amusing how positive stories about tesla take the top spot on HN while news of the fire was quickly flagged off the front page.

Not to question what was said here, but:

> Had I not been in a Tesla, that object could have punched through the floor and caused me serious harm.

How is that the case? There are cars that are higher off the ground than a Tesla (where it wouldn't have a chance to punch through the floor) and most cars have material in the undercarriage to protect against small blows like this ...

nonchalance··on Kickstarter pledger scammed multiple projects for rewards
Does Indiegogo have a shot at unseating Kickstarter (or do they engage in the same tactics)?
nonchalance··on An open letter to the media, by Anonymous
Are the Guardian, the Telegraph and the New Statesman notable for their fair and balanced journalism (or are they the fox news of europe)?
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