Hacker News Reader

subandion Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt Is Working on a Secret Military Drone Project

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

It kinda is common knowledge though, the French version is right on the official flag and displayed all the time.

subandion Tell HN: AWS appears to be down again

If that were true, the line should be flat-ish, but it and playstation's show the same extreme spike at the same time as aws etc.

subandion Ask HN: News site that provides world updates only when relevant?

I don't know what he's peddling, the truth it is not. Headlines straight from his homepage:

"Ben Swann Exposes Institutional Failure Surrounding The Legitimate PizzaGate Investigation"

"Germany’s Deep State Murders Doctor for Spilling the Truth"

subandion Ruby for eBook Publishing

I was just daydreaming about this the other day and would definitely give the finished project a spin. Depending on what you need (I'm a Rails dev, so pretty ok with Ruby in general but probably of not much help on the system end) I'd be happy to support you.

subandion California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

Yeah I'm not disputing the general point that some people would do something like that. But the specific claim about a company called "100% Irish Beef" sounded a bit outlandish, so I googled it.

subandion California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

that's not true: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-100-beef/

subandion Ask HN: Remote Work for Refugees and Asylum Seekers?

Unless it's for charity, I don't know who'd hire someone like this over another remote worker in a less precarious and unstable situation. If it's for charity, there are more efficient ways to help people.

Like the other commenter said, I like the spirit. But I don't see it happening, I'm afraid.

subandion My Journey as a Self-Taught Programmer

Another self-taught programmer from Germany with no formal education to speak off, here. Job ads often pretend to require relevant degrees but companies will absolutely hire people without them. The "If this description doesn't fit you perfectly you should still apply" phrase they often put at the end of their ads isn't always just marketing speech.

subandion It’s hard work to make ordering groceries online so easy

"punch-resistant interior walls" This one is always so funny to me. Coming from the EU, I don't even have a "punch the wall" reflex baked into me, at all. Punch the screen, throw my phone, sure, even though I don't do it.

From a former line of work, many US friends used to punch their walls from time to time. None of my EU friends ever even tried or came close to.

subandion Ads are impersonating government websites in Google results, despite ban

The knowledge box can be 100% wrong, I reported a case where the shown answer was taken from a pop-quiz site - but it wasn't the actual answer, just the first possible (and diametrically wrong) of multiples choices for a user to click on.

subandion How poker and a spaceship imposter game make you better at life

Both true, but the point still stands:

You're basically the best player. You'll play maybe 20 hands an hour, live - most of which you'll instantly throw away and make $0. Let's say you play 50% of your hands like a (somehow winning) maniac. That's 10 hands an hour you might make money on. Even the best players' "won money in a hand they put money in" stat is way under 50% - lower, the higher %age of hands they decide play. So you'd expect get 4 winning hands per hour, or 40 hands a day if you have the stamina (and the bad opponents to play with!). Now, most of your winning hands will result in relatively small wins (your opponents also try to win and don't light money on fire) and guess what - the bigger wins and losses stem from the more volatile situations (e.g. going to showdown) where luck plays an even bigger role than in poker in general: It's totally normal to do everything correctly and having to root for a 32% outcome in a big hand.

That long run might never arrive for you, even though you're the best.

I'm not "against poker" by any means, I would not be where I am today without it. Live poker is a (nice) gamble though, not a job.

subandion How poker and a spaceship imposter game make you better at life

The problem here is, in professional poker, the long run might never come.

In online poker, every hand you play is tracked and can be analysed and people have "run bad" over hundreds of thousands of hands; more than a casino-player will ever see in their life at 20 hands per hour.

subandion How poker and a spaceship imposter game make you better at life

I was a professional poker player in another life and I agree; learning not to be result-orientated is one of the biggest life-lessons it thought me. Deciding to flip a coin for money where you get paid 3x your bet if you win, as long as you can afford to lose half of the time, is correct, regardless of outcome.

The other one is not being afraid of "tough" decisions - often, decisions are tough because all options are close in value. The closer their value is, the less it matters to choose the "correct" path, keeping in mind the future is unknowable and we always have imperfect information.

subandion Build a WhatsApp Chatbot with Python, Flask and Twilio

Will this be available in Germany as well? My company is already using your services for sms and happy about it.

subandion Firefox is getting language translation

It's way off 'never off', I work with colleagues who use it en <> de.

For example it will always translate 'order' in a sentence as 'Befehl' (I order you to fix a steak) instead of 'Bestellung' (I order a steak).

Both are correct, but completely different, and in our context we never mean the former.