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stx

568 karma · joined May 28, 2019

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stx··on The rich get richer and rates get lower
Whats your plan to survive this possibility? Stick it out and just expect smaller returns once property prices deflate?
stx··on The rich get richer and rates get lower
> Austerity measures will include wage and price controls (like Nixon did in 1970s), sky high interest rates.

^This is my biggest concern.

Thus far real estate has been my favorite investment. I assume though if interest rates go up peoples buying power and hence prices will go down. If I liquidate my investments I will owe taxes and I fear inflation will eat up the cash value.

Buy e-yuan? Leave the USA?

stx··on The U.S. government’s failed 1890s attempt to forge unity through currency
The reality is that wages have not kept up with inflation.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...

stx··on 'Do Not Split': A Hong Kong protest film [video]
I think he was referring to this:

https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-outlaw-protest...

stx··on Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)
Would cooling it help to reduce the amount of pressure the atmosphere has? Isn't the pressure on the surface something like 95 times that of earth.
stx··on Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump
>It'll be interesting to see if whoever replaces Ajit Pai holds a different view on public intercourse over the airwaves.

I think the word you mean is discourse not intercourse.

stx··on YouTube Class Action: Same IP Address Upload Pirate Movies and File DMCA Notices
I was at a school who was just starting to do some similar things. They had students register the mac of their devices (wired and wireless). So they identified students by mac. With this it was actually pretty easy for a bad actor to frame someone else by just changing their mac to another device on the network.

Same school would also lock your university account after 3 bad password attempts and you could only unlock in person at the library help desk. Again you can see the problem.

stx··on MDMA-assisted couples therapy investigated in pilot trial
I drink decaf coffee sometimes and still feel the same boost as drinking caffeinated even though I know is has much less caffeine. I guess its mostly in my head. Although decaf does have some caffeine.
stx··on Chinese database details 2.4mn influential people and how to press their buttons
Duplicate here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24489165
stx··on Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'
The thing is we (the US) did do this at one point in time. When I was a kid you could buy a coke in a glass bottle and return it when done to be re-used by the manufacturer. For some reason we stopped. We should bring that back.

When I was in Mexico around the early 2000 they still did this. When you buy a drink you could return it for a few cents back from the vender.

stx··on Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?
Yep, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_obscenity_statute

Looks like its never been enforced though. Really though laws that are not enforced are a bad thing because some day they could selectively be enforced. Also because they are not enforced and hence not affecting anyone, no one cares to get rid of them.

"The Obscene Device Law is a Texas statute prohibiting the sale of sex toys. The law was introduced in 1973, and was last updated in 2003. While the law was never formally repealed, in 2008 a U.S. District Judge released a report declaring it to be "facially unconstitutional and unenforceable"."

stx··on Is TDD Dead? (2014)
> What triggers writing a test is what matters. Overzealous testers test for each new public method in a class.

I have seen this before. At one company I forced by a couple of other developers to write tests for accessors(get/set) on model classes. They would reject my PR if I didn't do it. To leadership it looked like I was against automated testing.

To me its more important to write tests for places where your most likely to make mistakes. For example calculations or business logic or how the view renders your model as it changes. Not every single small method.

stx··on Report finds $50b of cryptocurrency moved out of China hinting at capital flight
This is something that I suspect could cause another crypto boom even if a short lived one. If/when government decisions or some other forces cause people to want to move currency and avoid government scrutiny there will be a large amount of cash flowing into crypto currency.
stx··on Chat server on a WiFi-enabled SD card
It could be cool for creating some equivalent of wifi geocaching. Small simple websites that you need to get within a specific area to access.
stx··on Chat server on a WiFi-enabled SD card
They just didn't use the right SD card. You need a class 11 Super ULTRA Extreme SD card made by some specific brand.
stx··on Apple boots Fortnite from the App Store after Epic adds direct payments
This is a dupe. See the discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24146987
stx··on Dishwashing detergent hack: Two ingredients (2015)
The author never mentioned using laundry detergent in a dishwasher. I checked before posting my comment.
stx··on Dishwashing detergent hack: Two ingredients (2015)
Take it from someone who tried. You can use dish detergent in the washing machine (clothes) but using laundry deterge in the dishwasher has interesting results. You will get bubbles coming out all over the place.
stx··on The Social Media Problem
> If they've been doing so much work, and it's just the "moderation is hard" problem that has slowed them, why do all of their sites make it so convoluted to report content?

I think they are trying to narrow what can be flagged. I think they want to avoid people just flagging posts they do not agree with. There is a quote "History is a set of lies agreed upon." To me you could replace history with social media and the quote would be true. Or at least thats the lie I agree with.

stx··on No net insect abundance and diversity declines across US
This sounds pretty surprising to me since I thought I kept hearing that insects were in decline globally. This made me curious.

One thing I often check is who the author(s) are and what their links to industry might be. For example if the paper claims that "Smoking is good for you in moderation" and then after googling the author I find they have ties to Marlboro I start to doubt the authenticity of the research.

In this case the authors are mostly organizations that from what I can tell do not have any affiliation with for example an insecticide company or even a company. The only non organization author I see listed is Michael S. Crossley. I googled him and did not find anything suspicious. He does not appear to have a background in entomology or ecology. I am not really sure if that is reason to be suspicious but just thought I would share.

Here is a link about one of the authors: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/education/people/michael-w-crossley...

stx··on 70% of surveyed Americans say they can't do their job without internet
Assuming I did bring in an 80mb js library into a web app wouldn't there be something in the build process that removes unreachable code? I mostly have backend and mobile experience with only a little frontend experience. But I agree many modern pages are way larger then they really need to be.
stx··on Experiment Reveals Which Face Masks Are Best at Blocking Droplets
Yeah, The basic point is just about any mask, is better then no mask.
stx··on Planet Ceres is an 'ocean world' with sea water beneath surface, mission finds
Is this actually H2O water? I read the article but I am still unclear.

I am often excited to hear that water was discovered on some planet or moon but its always a disappointment to learn that its liquid methane or some other liquid that is not actually H2O water.

stx··on The Clean Network – United States Department of State
There is the story about a man who invented a way to coat glass with diamonds. He was negotiating to sell his invention to Huawei when they shipped one of his samples to China even though he instructed them not to because it was export controlled technology. The reason it is export controlled is that such an invention has applications in military laser weapons. I am summarizing from memory but you can read this article to learn more.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-04/huawei-st...

stx··on Hackers are defacing Reddit with pro-Trump messages
Its strange that some of these messages are written in Chinese. https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1596820874448-s...

Also some messages instead of saying Donald Trump they used 唐纳德·特朗普 which are the Chinese characters for Donald Trump according to google translate.

Was this done to try to frame China or something? Or would Chinese hackers really use Chinese characters?

stx··on Hackers are defacing Reddit with pro-Trump messages
If the goal was to increase support for Trump I don't think it will accomplish that goal.
stx··on US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days
>Can you show me such a video of Uyghurs in China. >I will answer it for you: no you can't.

All your doing is proving that China has no freedom of speech. The reason The reason I cant show you such a video is because of Chinese censorship. Such a video would never be allowed to circulate. The fact that a video of George Floyde being murdered can be shared in the US proves that in US we tolerate speech even when it shows the US in bad light. Also the cops who did this to Floyde are being prosecuted.

Even something as simple as a picture of Winnie the Pooh is banned in China because people compared Pooh, a children's cartoon to China's leader. Imagine the leader of a country having his feelings hurt by a child's cartoon so bad that he bans the cartoon.

stx··on US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days
Comparing the treatment of black people in the US to the treatment of Uyghurs (ethnic muslim Chinese) is not a realistic comparison at all. Currently Uyghurs in China are forced into prison camps for nothing other then being Uyghurs. They are then forced into labor or in some cases even have their organs harvested. Yes the US did enslave black people but that was stopped long ago and generally Americans agree that was wrong.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/03/05/china-move...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-forcefully-harvests...

stx··on Trump bans US transactions with Chinese-owned TikTok and WeChat
Although I understand why but I can see banning WeChat as being much more annoying to its users. Chinese people in the US use WeChat to communicate with family back home and its more then a messenger.
stx··on U.S. FAA proposes requiring key Boeing 737 MAX design changes
Why not include a secondary angle of attack sensor. From what I hear some military aircraft have 4 of them in case of failure. I do understand that the bigger issue was not just that the angle of attack sensor failed but that the crew was not informed of how to handle the failure.
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