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paloaltokidon Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?

This post for me contains deep wisdom: https://dhemery.com/articles/resistance_as_a_resource/

paloaltokidon Ask HN: How do I learn drawing?

A few resources for learning how to draw.

Books:

* Fun with a Pencil by Andrew Loomis (everything Loomis is great)

* Perspective made Easy by Norling

* Christopher Hart's books (friendly to beginners)

YouTube:

* Proko

* Alphonso Dunn

* moderndayjames

Websites:

* Drawabox

* Kazone

Podcast:

* Draftsmen (Marshall Vandruff is an excellent source of guidance)

paloaltokidon Ruby 3.0

I miss Ezra as well, he was a great example of someone who moved things forward just because he cared. Ezra also put way more effort and passion than anyone could reasonably expect into growing the Ruby and Rails ecosystem and community. I enjoyed listening to many of his talks.

paloaltokidon Kurt Vonnegut on 8 ‘shapes’ of stories

Nice site, it's fun to look around!

I threw a curveball at it: http://prosecraft.io/library/mark-z-danielewski/house-of-lea...

It would be interesting to see if Prosecraft would ever correlate "similar books" with Borges since Danielewski said that was an influence.

paloaltokidon A Beginner's Garden of Chess Openings (2002)

When I was starting to learn chess I liked the London System. It was easy to memorize and helped me get a footing in how to think about chess.

paloaltokidon Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

You're not living unless the winter weather almost kills you when you're walking the dog!

paloaltokidon Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

Meh. Yes, sure, by statistics. But those rates come from neighborhoods that most likely don't have a lot of six-figure salary tech workers in them.

paloaltokidon Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas

Have you never been to Chicago? Pretty nice town.

paloaltokidon Pornhub just purged all unverified content from the platform

> the entire world's

Not the entire world, just those currently running it. Education is the great leveler thus access is restricted.

paloaltokidon The Rise and Fall of Ambrosia Software (2019)

Well I'll be damned. Yes it is! Thank you!

paloaltokidon The Rise and Fall of Ambrosia Software (2019)

There's a game from the 90s called Hyperspeed by MicroProse that I wish someone would do a similar writeup on. I freaking loved that game and I can't find it anywhere now.

paloaltokidon A 73-year-old Japanese artist took YouTube by storm

I do art on the side and came across Shibasaki's videos maybe a year ago. I agree with others on the thread, he's a wonderful man.

One note: if you are inspired to try watercolor after seeing this article/videos, don't be discouraged if you struggle. Watercolor seems easy (that's what kids do, right?) but it's very difficult to master.

paloaltokidon Brave Complies With Apple iOS Guidelines

BAT sounds to me like just another form of airline miles or cryptocurrency?

paloaltokidon MasterCard to stop processing payments on Pornhub, cites unlawful content

I am not a fan of PornHub because I feel that many of their practices are unethical. That said, as with so many other controversial topics, keeping things legal is ultimately better as it provides opportunities for oversight and regulation. Things being legal don't make them okay though, I am in favor of legalizing prostitution but I also believe it should not exist in the first place.

Kristof's piece is a classic "moral panic" article. It could have been written basically at any time in the last 100 years (at least). What is different this time is that the focus is on a modern delivery medium, the internet. But scandalized reporting about the wide distribution and availability of child pornography is nothing new. I remember being a kid and seeing headlines in the newspaper about "internet pedophile porn web rings" being taken in by the police, that was in the 1990s.

As for the motivations behind the people pushing the narrative, they're diverse. Some are religious, some are political, some have nefarious motives. Ultimately these things always distract from the thing no-one ever wants to do: hear from the victims and find real ways to prevent the abuse.

paloaltokidon No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This

Your insight and the comments in the Github thread all back up the same point - the current economic model is not set up to empower or distribute wealth to the little guy.

I think it was phk who many years ago pointed out that Free Software is really anti-capitalist at heart; it makes sense that it would come from America (and MIT!) because of how the economic system works there.

The licenses are a distraction. The bigger issues are structural in terms of how the economy is set up. Our current free market system is predicated on folks at the bottom of the pyramid getting squeezed for their labor. It is only when it starts happening to us and not folks somewhere else that we begin to do something about it.

paloaltokidon Architecture Playbook

Any stack really if you have a well-gelled team that knows how to communicate and collaborate well together. If you don't have that as your starting point, things will be hard.

Rails is great for certain types of web applications because of the fast feedback loop.

With that said, there are many other good stacks out there today that allow you to go fast. I think Rails is really a victim of its own success. What DHH got right was to focus on developer UX. Now all the other major stacks have understood that there's a new normal in terms of minimum acceptable developer UX quality level and minimum feedback cycle speed. Spring Boot (possibly with Kotlin), .Net Core (possibly with F#), SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose, React Native, React, etc. etc. Everyone is building to the "sexy" dev experience that Rails introduced. jQuery and Prototype were a big deal when they first came out as well.

You also need a good CI/CD pipeline and modern DevOps practices so you can decouple deployment from release.

But like I said before, team communication above all else.

paloaltokidon How To Be An Anti-Casteist

It’s true that they may have extended him a genuine invitation. It’s also true that he may have overthought it. But that is kind of the point of the story, no?

After you endure enough discrimination and persecution, your trust in others are eroded. You start to irrationally question the motives of others. Eventually you lash out preemptively because you’re afraid.

This is why discrimination and oppression is bad. It tears at the fabric of society.

paloaltokidon How To Be An Anti-Casteist

Have you ever been discriminated against? And on a consistent and ongoing basis? When people are after you all the time, you start to learn the warning signals.

paloaltokidon How To Be An Anti-Casteist

I’ll stick my neck out here and say that my assumption is that you’re a white guy like myself.

If you don’t know, many non-white people get asked that question all the time. That dance you say you can’t imagine, well, it happens quite frequently.

paloaltokidon How To Be An Anti-Casteist

I think you misunderstood. The point is that it's not in his head - he knows his Indian colleagues are trying to figure out his caste. Non-Indians don't have a caste so he knows it's safe in that situation.

paloaltokidon How To Be An Anti-Casteist

> The dialogue here seems foreign to me. Playing a coy game where you realize someone is trying to infer something about you so you dodge the question. It's weird to imagine that people engage in a cultural dance where you need certainty of arbitrary facts before you decide to act like a dick (oversimplified).

Okay but where are you really from?

paloaltokidon How To Be An Anti-Casteist

> I would appreciate if people can let me know what's wrong with this comment.

I didn't downvote your comment but I will venture a guess.

It sounds like you are condoning and/or possibly endorsing the caste system. If you say "all mature societies need division of labor" does that mean you believe that everybody should be pigeonholed into a particular occupation forever?

It seems like there is a bigger point you are trying to makie but you need to write a little more to make it clear. Some of your spelling and formatting could be improved as well. It is strange but you can make a really excellent point but if it is poorly formatted or you have spelling mistakes, people will downvote you.

paloaltokidon How To Be An Anti-Casteist

There were a lot of insightful comments when the lawsuit mentioned in the article was first announced.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697827

paloaltokidon Apple Officially Obsoletes Last iPod Nano Model

Seeing this made me remember the iPod Shuffle. That was also a nice product.

paloaltokidon Prince's Sign O' The Times: An oral history

I always took it in a different way. Prince is speaking to that human thing in all of us that wants to experience something greater than what we currently are. Prince's music is very spiritual. Humans have always wanted to fly and have always gotten in trouble, the story of Icarus is how old at this point?

IMHO Prince is one of the biggest musical geniuses to ever live. His songs are very multi-layered and insightful.

paloaltokidon Testimony to House committee by former Facebook executive Tim Kendall

I'm sure getting people into the ovens at Auschwitz presented a fascinating logistical challenge as well. They probably got some really good enterprise architects on that effort. Likely a great career start for many.

paloaltokidon Testimony to House committee by former Facebook executive Tim Kendall

I think it's interesting how folks always seem to grow a conscience only AFTER they made their riches.

paloaltokidon Testimony to House committee by former Facebook executive Tim Kendall

In that case, if you want to really freak out, read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. We have been steadily cruising into this future for some time now. "Libra" is just another word for "Kong Bucks."

paloaltokidon Testimony to House committee by former Facebook executive Tim Kendall

Why not?

paloaltokidon Diversity-Related Training Meta-analysis

Let's agree that anyone who is concerned about workplace sexual harassment should do their own research and not rely on an internet forum for legal advice!