pavanred

I had just moved to USA from the other side of the world as a student. And, most of the sports I follow like F1, tennis, cricket, football (soccer) were happening mainly in Europe/Asia/Australia, and that means most of the live action happened in the middle of the night for me because of the timezones. I started missing lot of sporting action that I used to follow. I used Linux Mint + Cinnamon back then, so I created an cinnamon applet that displayed live scores, upcoming games and recently finished results on my desktop menubar.

cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/applets/view/115

I don't maintain it anymore, and I donated the applet to the linux mint team (they moved many applets to the main linux mint cinnamon spices repo recently)

What surprised me was that almost every news report/pleas on tv shows to help seemed to mention and emphasize that these people are American citizens. I didn't see the same thing happen with the other hurricane coverage. Is awareness about this really an issue?

Everyone seems to be making the assumption that all the work IBM India does is outsourced from US. IBM India is the biggest domestic IT player in India with clients like Airtel, Indian Railways, HDFC etc.; IBM India also services clients from other countries in the world (which wouldn't have happened otherwise because its too expensive in the US). And, IBM India, has a few research labs setup that do independent research.

Considering this, how is the number of employees in India and US even a relevant question. Isn't it similar to say why is there more manufacturing workforce in China when compared to US for company X? We know why, it costs less for the company and the client, and taking advantage of it opened up new markets/demand.

> Apple makes pennies on the headphones compared to what they make from the iPhones

airpods cost $160 and beats headphones aren't cheap either. I doubt that's making pennies on headphones either way.

I am incredibly excited about such missions and love reading/following them but really, why "should" we explore space?

Edit: Let me clarify why I ask this, I had once seen some documentary where a marine biologist makes a point something to the effect of - we understand less about our deep oceans than space, but there is a huge delta in our research spending on each. So, why are certain fields more important for research than others, in short, why space?

I guess question is less of was it successful but rather was it necessary and did the move do any good at all?

One thing I can't understand is, when I look up all the countries/regimes/dictators in history that have tried demonetization, and almost always it was done for the same reason - curbing corruption, black money, counterfeiting etc., and generally it resulted in people losing confidence in the institutions/governments, no real dent in corruption, counterfeiting even decades later. Unless I missed something, it just puzzles me why we would try it now and expect a different result.

Probably less plausible than you think. What incentive would company X have in denying service to someone based on unrelated parameters? That's just going to reduce business and profits. With credit scores, its a bit different. Credit scores are a risk profile of the consumer, so if a company doesn't deny service/charge higher interest to a consumer with low credit scores, it potentially stands to loose money. Besides, this is regulated, using parameters like gender, age, race etc. in your underwriting model is still illegal, I think.

Any such score, used to deny service to group x based on parameters unrelated to the product itself would simply be discrimination, no?

I guess I was trying to paraphrase the comedian there, I guess I can just remove the "valid" qualifier and use embarrassed instead of offended, but the point I was trying to make pretty much remains the same.

My point, shame has always been useful, at least for me. Feeling ashamed is a sign of knowing I can be doing better, and it generally motivates to do better. Its not easy. But, why do we draw lines that shouldn't be crossed on anything that might make us feel this.

You shouldn't call a smelly apartment smelly, because someone might feel embarrassed, even if you are not trying to be a dick. For instance, the author researches and publishes an article about a popular course and the people offering it and gets called an asshole for one sentence without any judgemental qualifiers, ignoring everything else in the article.

Honest question. If it really smelt, would you still be offended? I am genuinely curious. I watched Bill Burr stand up comedy routine recently and he touches upon a similar topic. Though its comedy, I thought he made a good point - shame is a valid human emotion, why are we as a society so against feeling it, even when it is justified.

To me that sentence reads as a factual description devoid of judgement.

EDIT: I am surprised so many feel strongly about this and it didn't strike to me as insensitive at all. Just makes me realize that being sensitive to others is quite hard, specially while writing for platforms with such diverse set of users. How would one know? :)

What's unreasonable is the cost of repair which was quite conveniently not mentioned here. And, this is not just Apple. I owned a Moto X and my display cracked after over a year and half of use. The warranty doesn't cover it anymore and authorized repair was going to cost me an estimated $120 (excluding taxes). The phone had not reached it's end of life, but by then the phone it self is quite cheaper and it made sense to just buy a new phone instead of investing more into a phone that will probably not be supported with updates for long. And, the old one is now catching dust in my house.

You fear what you don't understand

Exactly my point.

Myanmar got their freedom. Now, there is another problem and the current establishment isn't doing enough. And, what you shared is, again, the world media covering these lapses. Suu Kyi did a lot right in the fight for freedom, but doesn't make her infallible. Perhaps some one else from within Myanmar will rise up and champion the cause. And, the world media and external entities do their part to help in terms of coverage, spreading awareness, diplomatic pressure, sanctions etc. We cannot just brush off the efforts of the latter saying they are doing it just to please themselves.

It's definitely more than just publicity. There's a difference. Being on the cover of a Time magazine is publicity. But a Nobel Prize (or similar recognition) is not just publicity. It's elevating a person to the same stature as Nelson Mandela, MLK etc. It's hope to the people following them, it's inspiration, it's recognition. It's a signal to the establishment that it's no longer just a dissident but perhaps birth of a movement, if history has taught us anything. It's definitely more. If not anything, there is a big chunk of prize money, it generally is put to use for a good cause too. :)

We can't just simply discount the effect of the Nobel prize and world media coverage of Liu Xiaobo. I am reading the book Perfect Hostage by Justin Wintle, it's about the life of Aung San Suu Kyi. And, yes there were a lot of Burmese people and their leader who fought fearlessly for democracy, but I think in addition to that there is a real sizable effect of Suu Kyi winning the Nobel peace prize and world media coverage following it. Whether you like to attribute it or not, I think the effect is very real. Suu Kyi was house arrested for few years when she was awarded the Nobel prize, this was followed by many other awards and recognition, the world media coverage about Suu Kyi and their cause increased and so did the general awareness about the plight of the people and their struggle, and so did the diplomatic pressure from other countries, sanctions, embargoes etc. I know the situation of present day China and Burma in the early 90s is very different but I think the point still stands.

Many simply don't know. For instance, Liu Xiaobo was banned from public speaking and it was banned to publish his writing. I won't be surprised if he was better known outside China than inside.

I know a couple who had their second kid while they had a small child already. They share the same feeling about it being very hard. But, their reasoning had something to do with how they grew up and how their kids would.

Both of them had siblings growing up, and by the time they had their first kid, they had this good family support system - parents (grand parents to the kid), siblings (aunts/uncles to the kid). Even after their parents are gone, there still are their siblings (their spouses and kids) that still are part of that family support system, an immediate family that you can trust and rely on (at least in most families, I guess).

They were worried that for their kid when he/she grows up, after they are gone, there would be no immediate family left at all. No siblings, so no aunts or uncles or cousins. This is made worse because the age when they had their first kid was almost a decade later compared to when their parents had their first kid. And, it doesn't help either that families are more spread now with people moving to different parts of the world for opportunities and careers than it was a generation ago.

This seems to be a pretty common sentiment here. But, here's my question, if you start up doesn't have big data now, then should you assume it will not have big data tomorrow.

I work with a start up which currently doesn't have "big data", but perhaps "medium data". And, I can perhaps manage without a big data stack in production. But, if I look at the company/sales targets then in the next 6-12 months we will be working with clients that assures "big data".

Now, here are my choices - 1. Stick to python scripts and/or large aws instances because it works for now. If the sales team closes deals in the next few months after working tirelessly for months, then though the sales team sold the client a great solution, but in reality we can't scale and we fail. 2. Plan for your start up to succeed, plan according to the company targets. Try and strike a balance for your production stack that isn't an huge overkill now but isn't under planned/worked either.

It's easy to say we shouldn't use big data stack till we have big data, but its too late (specially for a startup) to start building a big data stack after you have big data.

A quick search about the village, Marottichal, and it's chess obsession will lead you to a lot of other publications about this topic. I found similar articles which included pictures of men and women enjoying chess.

First the observation and subsequently this assumption, perhaps speaks more about how we let stereotypes cloud our thinking and judgement, and less about the people of the village/country themselves.

I tried Inbox for a few weeks but then reverted back to Gmail. I used labels quite well too. I loved Inbox classifying my mail, it was a breeze to find emails from trips etc, removing clutter, I liked the remind me later feature too.

After a few weeks of usage one thing that bothered me was that Inbox was slower. I continued to use it until I found that I had missed a few mails because Inbox had classified them incorrectly. I figured I'd rather use Gmail and make sure I didn't miss any mail, even if I have to sift through a few more mails. It basically comes down to what you prefer to tolerate type 1 or type 2 errors. And, search has always been good.

I don't understand this sentiment. And, I am surprised to see it on HN this often too. It's saying - I care about X, till problems with X are all solved, any effort on anything else is snarked upon with judgement of wasting effort.

It used to be only on threads discussing an accomplishment of a space agency of a poorer country, and a popular sentiment was if a fraction of their GDP should be spent on science and technology till poverty is eradicated. Same thing here, why one person should spend time on a personal project until we resolve climate change. I understand prioritizing bigger problems with more time, effort and money. But, ridiculing others for spending time and effort on making/discussing something you think is not the most important is something else.

Can we not use an inverter, convert to AC, step up and use the existing infrastructure for transmission.

Besides, I guess there should be an added advantage to monitoring and using (charge/discharge) the batteries better than letting the user do the maintenance like preventing discharging to zero, temperature etc.

Here is a similar solution but with an AWS Lambda function in Python and using a cloudwatch event to trigger the lambda function on a schedule. [0]

[0] https://kerneltrick.in/aws-lambda-cronjob-schedule/

Isn't a new thing, is it? There have always been new ways to test/differentiate candidates, but soon candidates identify the advantage and prepare for the test instead of actually becoming better at what they do. The scores of "Interview questions" books and websites are the evidence of this.

This is perhaps just the next thing, setup a blog and a bunch of repos on github, and if that makes the recruiter think you a better candidate, I am sure shortly everyone will do it, if they aren't already.

I really wish people and the media stop over emphasizing about every gaffe and focus on real news stories. For instance, the "alternative facts" comment/incident is being talked about everywhere, from TV news channels to news parody shows to talk shows to social media etc. But, at the same time it seems like there is so much more important news that one would think deserves more attention like the executive orders, withdrawal from TPP, revival of oil pipelines, changes in healthcare spending etc. I even just saw news articles headlining on the guardian now about agencies being banned from sharing information on social media or to reporters and few journalists getting felony charges after covering the protests around the inauguration.

It almost makes me wonder if it would be a good idea if there was a website that covered the latest gaffe and the corresponding actual news worthy story that was lost out on optimal coverage because of it.

Edit: I couldn't find this before but here is an interesting article I read yesterday [0]. It's an opinion piece by Alexey Kovalev. - "I’ve reported on Putin – here are my tips for journalists dealing with Trump".

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/23/report...

Some online services (e.g. Doordash) which ask you to pay a tip upfront even before the service irrespective of the quality. And, the default option is pre-selected to 15% of the cost on the checkout page. This after a specified delivery charge, and some "fees" bundled along with taxes etc.

And I read articles about how companies like Doordash are not making profits and are riding on VC money. It is just passing the buck onto the customers to keep their uneconomical business models afloat.

Agree, I sometimes wonder how much of this is just a manifestation of our fear of the unknown.

Consider, the world before the internet when the postal services was doing all the heavy lifting for communication. Once we got internet, a huge chunk communication was replaced by email etc. But, it also gave rise to eCommerce, on demand delivery services etc. And, the same postal services companies are doing better than ever before.

While that is the intention, I am guessing it would lead to having legal involved in the editorial process. And, legalase-ish news to avoid prosecution traps, perhaps. Am not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

Or say your government claims X has WMD and that we need to go to war, now. And, the press prints it as factual news. Turns out there's wasn't any and the government just misled (could be willful or ignorance or negligence). Now, will the press be held accountable for fake news or the government or no one?

Does automation really remove jobs or just displace them? Honest question. I mean, in this instance, I see perhaps jobs of 10 cashiers in a store replaced with 1-2 monitoring the store and rest done by automation. But, then this gives rise to a whole set of new jobs and industries too, the engineers that design these systems, the ones that build these machines, industries supplying manufacturing of hardware for these system, software developers, maintaining hardware, maintaining software, customer support, servicing. So, if this is deployed in all stores in a city then will employment numbers add up to become a zero sum? Is it just displacing employment from one category(or location) of manual tasks to different tasks?

Besides, if most people lose their jobs to automation in the near future, there won't be enough people who can afford to buy stuff at these stores anyway, so won't it become uneconomical to run these stores?