Hacker News Reader

rainhackeron Churchill’s Famine: The killing of three million is a story waiting to be retold

Not sure how this comment made it to the top. As its not so much about importing food, but exporting it from a starving country.

From another post in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36104069

"I think the question is was the resources diverted from same regions to fight the war or policy decisions taken which would accelerate the onset of famine?

Quoting from the book:

> The "rice denial" policy saw soldiers confiscate and destroy rice deemed surplus; according to one journalist, thousands of tons of rice were thrown into the water in east Bengal.[8] The "boat denial" policy saw 46,000 boats able to carry more than ten passengers confiscated; bicycles, carts and elephants were also taken.[9] One civil servant said the policy "completely broke the economy of the fishing class" in Bengal.

he answer seems an resounding yes - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill%27s_Secret_War#:~:..."

rainhackeron Microsoft joins ONDC network, to launch a shopping app in India

ONDC Strategy Paper:

https://ondc.org/image/ONDCStrategyPaper.pdf

rainhackeron Ask HN: I suck at math, where to start?

> It's like memorizing a few programs as a way to learn coding -makes 0 sense and it's kinda sad.

Ironically, many programmers are doing exactly this to crack whiteboard style interviews in MAANG, and many other tech firms.

rainhackeron Ask HN: How did my LastPass master password get leaked?

Anyone else considering having another password managers, such as bitwarden, and periodically syncing it with lastpass?

rainhackeron Amazon Music wants to overhaul the company's controversial performance review

Thanks for pointing it out, there is a typo in the URL. I cannot edit it. This is the correct URL:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-music-wants-to-scrap-...

Can a mod fix it please?

rainhackeron Amazon Music wants to overhaul the company's controversial performance review

https://archive.md/AnixI

rainhackeron FBI releases 9/11 investigation document that scrutinized Saudis

> Task Force 74 was a task force assembled from the Seventh Fleet of the United States Navy that was deployed to the Bay of Bengal by the Nixon administration in December 1971, at the height of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_Force_74

US administration at the time supported Pakistan in that war.

The genocide isn’t even acknowledged:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/genocide-us-cant-reme...

rainhackeron Bezoism

https://archive.is/Kp9lQ

rainhackeron Amazon will monitor workers' keystrokes to 'combat data theft'

Amazon does not provide a company phone. Employees install paging app on their personal phones. I wonder how closely they monitor activities on phones of their employees.

rainhackeron An old hacker's tips on staying employed

“OK, let’s go your way then. I still don’t completely agree with everything proposed here, but I think I’ve made my case, and we need to move on.”

Sounds like a line I could use settling lengthy back and forth in code reviews.

Curious what techniques people use to settle disagreements in code reviews.

rainhackeron Dating in Delhi when you're poor

We never went to malls as everything there was out of my budget. I was also afraid that they would throw us out because we couldn’t speak English

Reading this breaks my heart. In a few weeks India beings an year-long celebration to mark the country’s 75th Independence Day. And yet people feel discriminated because the don’t speak English.

rainhackeron Amazon devices will soon automatically share your Internet with neighbors

Sidewalk is showing as disabled for me. I wonder if they changed the default to disabled after this article came out.

rainhackeron Design structured diagrams, built to increase your team's trust in your docs

I am searching for quite sometime an application which can detect, and convert hand drawn shapes on a computer (using mouse or stylus) to proper shapes. This will make life so much easier for someone who makes architecture diagrams frequently. The closest offering I could find was with iPad 'Shape Recognition'[1]. But the number of shapes it detects is limited. It also does not appear to be really - meant for or integrated with - tools like draw.io.

[1] https://www.apple.com/ipados/ipados-14/features/

rainhackeron Chinese court cannot stop suit in India, says Delhi High Court

> In the event, the Wuhan Court directs InterDigital to deposit the fine of RMB 1 million per day, Justice Shankar ordered Xiaomi,within one week of passing such an order by the Chinese Court, to deposit a similar amount before the Delhi High Court.

Wuhan court threatens a company to take back it’s court case in India against a Chinese company, or pay RMB 1 million. Indian court retaliates with a similar fine on Xiaomi, if Chinese courts fine InterDigital.

Isn’t there an international court/forum where bullying like this by Chinese courts can be challenged?

rainhackeron Facebook Down?

It's working for me now.

rainhackeron Email from Jeff Bezos to employees

I feel it can be an uncertain transition when a founder/entrepreneur steps down, and an employee of the company takes the place. Looking forward to how Amazon will evolve under the new leadership.

rainhackeron How to Understand Things

Great article. A nice followup can be an article that talks about how to prioritize, or select which problems to take a deep dive in.

rainhackeron Ask HN: What do you use to keep track of bookmarks/notes/snippets?

On macbook, I use alfred : https://www.alfredapp.com/ It is freemium, and bookmarking feature is free. It is much more than storing bookmarks though.

rainhackeron I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

For anyone who wondered why large tech companies pay Software Engineers so much, this is the reason. Software quality and performance translate into quantifiable dollar amount, and that amount is quite high.

rainhackeron Your New Medical Credit Score Could Deny You Care

I wonder Experian will buy fitness trackers/apps data now and use it in ratings.

rainhackeron Tulsa Race Riot

> From my wife the American education system only covers the parts where they did “good”, that’s not prioritization that’s deliberately selective rewriting of history

This is pretty common among other countries. A big one is Britain's Colonial history. It isn't part of school curriculum in Britain.

rainhackeron Why the Amazon Basics Keyboard Is My Favorite Keyboard

Which type of switches do you use in ErgoDox?

rainhackeron Ask HN: Best resources to gain math intuition?

I like 'Better Explained'[1]. It specifically focuses on intuitive understanding of mathematics.

A post I like is on adding numbers 1 to 100 [2]. The staple formula is n(n+1)/2, sum of arithmetic progression. How can we intuitively arrive that this formula?

> Technique 1: Pair Numbers Pairing numbers is a common approach to this problem. Instead of writing all the numbers in a single column, let’s wrap the numbers around, like this:

1 2 3 4 5

10 9 8 7 6

An interesting pattern emerges: the sum of each column is 11. As the top row increases, the bottom row decreases, so the sum stays the same.

Because 1 is paired with 10 (our n), we can say that each column has (n+1). And how many pairs do we have? Well, we have 2 equal rows, we must have n/2 pairs.

Number of Paris x Sum of Each Pair = (n/2) (n + 1) = n(n+1) / 2

[1] https://betterexplained.com/

[2] https://betterexplained.com/articles/techniques-for-adding-t...

rainhackeron Meeting online has become the most popular way U.S. couples connect: study

Yes. What I meant was, I think the skew towards more attractive people is higher when it comes to online dating.

Offline, people may know each other from work, mutual friends etc for some time before they actually start dating (not including speed/blind dating). In my experience, getting to know someone in person first and having a sense of comfort and security makes the physical attractiveness aspect somewhat less important.

rainhackeron Meeting online has become the most popular way U.S. couples connect: study

> I think that internet dating is a modest positive addition to our world. It is generating interaction between people that we otherwise wouldn’t have. People who have in the past had trouble finding a potential partner benefit the most from the broader choice set provided by the dating apps.

I feel online dating is skewed in favor of users who are in top x% attraction level. The return on time spent is poor if you are not very attractive.

Moreover, I think it's difficult to switch it off completely. It's harder to commit, invest time and effort to build a strong relationship even when things are not going smooth - when there is endless potential of finding someone better/more beautiful/taller/richer etc. just a few swipes away.

rainhackeron Chinese are big customers for schemes selling foreign residency

An interesting related incident regarding the role of EB-5 in the financing of Hudson Yards was a top HN post[1] not too long ago.

> Manhattan’s new luxury mega-project was partially bankrolled by an investor visa program called EB-5, which was meant to help poverty-stricken areas

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19644880

rainhackeron Things I learnt the hard way in thirty years of software development

> Beware of micro-aggressions

> Toxic/micro-aggressors are only fixable if they are YOU

This is a good thing to keep in mind. But the article doesn't provide any suggestion when you are a victim. Anyone has tip(s) to deal with a micro-agressor?

rainhackeron To be great, be good repeatably

> if you are in a first world country you just work hard and the wealth will come pouring in? Still sounds like sarcasm tbh

No. Later in the writeup, the author talks about 'Habit of Progression' which adds more context:

> "There is one thing to clarify: this habit of progression must come with the right inputs. Being consistent with something leading you in the wrong direction will unsurprisingly lead you in the wrong direction. So if this is the way you are constantly moving (excluding short periods of local minima), pivot until you determine what the right inputs are."

So it's not just about working hard. It's about working hard in the right direction by analyzing the outcome of efforts and using it to refine the approach to move forward.

rainhackeron Nasa Says Earth Is Greener Today Than 20 Years Ago Thanks to China, India

A valid critique of the article. Though, to get a well-rounded view on this matter, take into account the per capita carbon footprints[1] also - which tells a different story than mainstream media:

Saudi Arabia: 16.85

United States: 15.53

Australia: 15.83

China: 6.59

India: 1.58

[1] https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/sc...