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potatopatch

166 karma · joined October 15, 2023

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potatopatch··on Researchers create humanitarian law digital emblem for the Red Cross
Modern states are basically just feudal states with their private extensions, particularly on the international level and over the last 3 decades they chose over and over to let analogies hold from meat space because it maintains or expands their power relative to other elements of society.

The Red cross should not look for specific legislation so that any states that are foolish enough can argue their own assumed rights away and will have to take that risk if they want to take back the right the Red cross is taking by the same analogy.

potatopatch··on Life lessons from a 44 year old (2022)
>> I just looked it up and even patients with brittle bone disease are highly encouraged to become as strong as possible through physical therapy because of the benefits of being strong.

>> There is but an insignificantly vanishingly small sliver of humanity too sick to strength train, even if it is just overhead pressing some cans of chicken noodle soup while you watch tv.

potatopatch··on Ask HN: How can I have a stable career when I don't like talking to most people?
I don't think you have a problem you need to solve on this directly. Be careful to present this as being a no nonsense professional who wants to solve the business problems that should be a mutual priority and make sure you show a little decorum (I.e. acknowledge things were said and that they are serious topics when appropriate) while redirecting conversations back on topic.

Most people will respect that and gain from a person who behaves that way even if they might resent staying on topic.

potatopatch··on Life lessons from a 44 year old (2022)
Being strong and not delusional is the least risky way to feel strong.
potatopatch··on The big bet on "tiny homes" to fix homelessness
The FCC did a lot to block zoning in cell phone tower placement and federal regulators should find a way to intervene here too. Meeting a primary basic need seems a bit more important than perfect 911 coverage to me.
potatopatch··on Rolling Stone's negative obituary for Henry Kissinger
Huh, he goes into exactly how a war criminal was protected from prosecution by the US ruling class. Kissinger was free to turn down the protection of the US and go to trial.

There's enough nonsense about Kissinger the beloved statesman to let one article violate the every issue has a Republican and Democratic viewpoint for someone who was beloved by the psychopathic hawks on both sides.

potatopatch··on Cyberattack – November 2023
It is a script kiddie surplus, where the unit of measure is the asshat.
potatopatch··on 38% of Europeans no longer eat three meals a day
I think food costs like many other costs remain near historic lows, but a euro stolen is a euro earned in every subsequent month for the coalition to prevent housing supply.
potatopatch··on Mentally-passive sedentary activities linked to 43% higher depression risk
While the cause of the initial depression may be something else, shutting off the TV may be the most viable cure for a long time depression where TV is the default activity. With enough entertainment there's not enough motivation to do less entertaining things that are ultimately less depressing because they are challenging.
potatopatch··on Elon Musk breaks world record for largest loss of personal fortune in history
You mean in the sense that all wealth is lost in death or is there a specific story of him losing everything?
potatopatch··on Israel tells Elon Musk Starlink can only operate in Gaza with its approval
If Gaza isn't able to even do ethereal things without Israel's regulation then so much for the two states with self determination explanation.

Personally, I think a forced elimination of the two state solution would be good. The more liberal elements of each society need to realize self determined religious demographic adjusted states are actually the enemy of their own self determination. Without a religious stalemate a more pious than thou ratcheting to a fundamentalist state gradually occurs.

potatopatch··on Nutrient found in beef and dairy improves immune response to cancer in mice
That's not really conclusive about anything as not all studies are done in South America..

Looking into pork for example, it is recommended as an alternative because it seems to have a lower incidence of many cancer types in studies and it's a great meat to smoke.

potatopatch··on Aspirin 81 (2019)
> Having nice round numbers is of no benefit to a patient.

Patients benefit from simplicity just like practitioners, they have to do math like whether they've reached 1500mg in a day or need to split pills when there is an availability problem (for a dosage.)

An optimal dose to be served to everyone is also a myth as dosing is calculated by weight, etc.

potatopatch··on Korean Smartphones Have Mandatory Shutter Sounds, 8 in 10 Want It Muted
I've seen a couple people who I think were vigilante in their photo taking, but either I missed something (and the person photographed clearly did too) or they were a bit off their rockers..

To me it seems like a law that attempts to handle something that is also generally discomforting.. I.e. after that kind of an experience one can wonder if the under ground man has a collection of photographs of you for some slight you don't understand.

potatopatch··on Reducing Kernel-Maintainer Burnout
Sounds like a money thing. Being a kernel engineer is being handcuffed to one or a small number of companies and a particular community. Meanwhile going up the stack is easy, will pay the same or offer higher risk/reward financial choices and let's you work anywhere.
potatopatch··on Being homeless means not being free − as Americans are supposed to be
The first exchange is as fair to the wild man as anyone else, property rights over land or something is I think where that topic goes..

If you had no reasonable way to acquire a toilet (like all of mankind until quite recently) would you choose to explode for the reassurance that the poo you step in is from dogs and wildlife? Earlier people apparently didn't choose extinction.

potatopatch··on What do Apple, Meta, TikTok have in common? Fighting Europe's antitrust rules
I don't know enough about tik tok to get how this would apply? Do they have integrations of some sort or does this mean they have to create a system for them?
potatopatch··on Programming as a career isn't right for me
In traditional development you didn't have one organ in a harness, then 3 organs in a harness, etc, having modified them to have no thickness that could hide something from a unit test. That's as different from the functioning frog as the dissected one.

There are endless permutations that are possible in this modern ideal that are all correct for some or all testing purposes, during all test runs, and in every system the average project participant will ever see up close.

They are wrong in production, vastly outnumber correct production configurations, and confuse any discussions about the attempt to port things to production as they are more canonical to the group than production itself.

That's not to say there aren't ways to do this style of multiple test types correctly, only that I think it was done with more care at each level instead of less as layered redundancy needs particular properties or you get holes that all line up, configuration for tests that make it to production, etc.

potatopatch··on YouTube is now blocking ad blockers so I make ads run faster
Good thing the whole site is a bug, though I rarely end up on YT by accident since videos are marked in web etiquette.

For twitter.com a filter option here on HN would be nice but a domain blocker might do.

potatopatch··on Programming as a career isn't right for me
The frog on a dissection table approach to software development seems like it is probably a primary cause of incidents involving lost surgical tools in production.
potatopatch··on Being homeless means not being free − as Americans are supposed to be
A classical liberal would believe in the social contract. If society adds a chain then society has a debt.

For example, a municipality doesn't need to provide a toilet to the extent that it doesn't have a problem with the freedom to not own one. If the municipality wants to achieve hygienic high density then it should pay its debts.

potatopatch··on Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny (2016)
They've been very careful not to and they were obviously right. They were very clearly mobbed by those who benefit from for-profit side which has more power and will determine what has to happen and how to make sure he can run a profit driven company that violates US law except on paper.

The funny part is that this means there is no commercial board looking out for interests like those of stock holders, so the stock holders have basically put themselves in the position the board was in AFA no recourse if the CEO is selecting another interest over theirs as well.

They want to know what the board knows but don't want the stock price to reflect it.

potatopatch··on 'Several people' could be the next Apple CEO, reveals Tim Cook
No, they just want to pick one.. Boring as ever apple management.
potatopatch··on Hell is other people – Why individualism shrinks the next generation
This actually is a conjecture/opinion piece, which is what teachers are usually trying to shape into other forms, and I found it very well written AFA clarity for casual reading, almost like it was written in another latin language with less brown book syphilis. Maybe not a (monolingual) native speaker, but probably not similar to an AI's training set.
potatopatch··on Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
Pretty silly thing to do whether or not you have perfect examples, and strange to follow that up with the fact that you've been offering career advice..

There's not a lot of benefit to making a public discussion out of something like that compared to the pretty personal ramifications to the person brought up, which makes even the most constructive attempts look vindictive.

potatopatch··on I tested four NVMe SSDs from four vendors – half lose FLUSH'd data on power loss (2022)
I'd be curious how well it actually correlates. It would be hard to make the most performant system that's always consistent with flushed data but there are probably a lot of firmwares out there with untested performance ideas, etc.
potatopatch··on Germany approves financial reforms to help its tech industry compete with SV
Yeah, no. For a small company its not really that complicated and it's also uniform. You can use a simple service for things like cookies and then manually comply in the backend.

Reading GDPR is less complicated than finding out precisely what unregulated in most states means.

potatopatch··on OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
I think the closed source for safety thing started as a ruse as the closed source has been instrumental to keeping control and justifying a non profit that is otherwise not working in the public interest. Splitting off this ruse nonprofit would almost certainly end up unleashing the tech normally like every other tech google, etc, have easily copied.
potatopatch··on OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
AFAICT Sam and his financial objectives was the reason for not open sourcing the work of a non profit.. He might be wishing he chose the other policy now that he can't legally just take the closed source with him to an unambiguously for profit company.

Personally, I would expect a lot more development of GPT-4+ as soon as this is split up from one closed group making gpt-5 in secret and it seems silly to exchange a reliable future for another few months of depending on this little shell game.

potatopatch··on Altman was raising billions from Middle East sovereign funds for AI chip startup
You rent it from TSMC, just like nvidia.
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