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themoat

364 karma · joined November 3, 2016

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themoat··on Passionate kissing is not a human universal (2015)
Sorry. I can admit I was wrong. I haven't seen ellipses used to begin a sentence that asks a question in a way that wasn't flippantly dismissive before. Couple that with a throwaway account and I jumped to conclusions.

I probably should have asked what his comment meant before I spoke.

themoat··on Passionate kissing is not a human universal (2015)
I lived in a couple third world countries where grown adults asked if we had cats in the United States.

Should I look down on them for not knowing something about my culture? Or do we have different concerns in our lives in different parts of the world?

I'm not saying that being culturally aware is not good for a person. I'm saying it's not a sign of being better than others. It's essentially the same as me memorizing brain teasers when I was 12. Neat, but not the type of thing to brag about.

themoat··on Passionate kissing is not a human universal (2015)
This is kind of a minor reason to leave a smug comment.

By what age should a person give deep thought into shows of romantic affection in cultures they've previously not considered?

themoat··on Forced migration to Google Sheets API v4
Who is this comment directed to? The author of the article, or their customers?
themoat··on Why the ‘Queen of Shitty Robots’ Renounced Her Crown
I don't really get the impression that she is looking down on it, just that she was ready to move on.

“it was harder and harder to come up with ideas. I was always concerned that it was eventually going to be like beating a dead horse, and that the joke was going to be over and I didn't have anywhere else to go.”

themoat··on I Ditched Google for DuckDuckGo
I know other people have already echoed your comment, but I feel the same. About a month ago I switched from chrome and google search to firefox and ddg. After about 2 days I completely forgot I was using ddg. It just stuck.
themoat··on Many elementary teachers don’t understand math, and it makes them anxious
My little brother was always better at Math than me. Whenever he tried to show me how to do something it was different than how our teachers showed us. He was really good at figuring out a method that made more sense for him, and it certainly worked for him.
themoat··on Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”
I can have this major feature done for you, but I'm not sure if it can be done in 2 months, so I say 3 to be conservative.

OR

I can have many small sub-features that relate to this major feature done in 2 months, but I might know exactly which features make the cut in those 2 months.

Seems congruous to me

themoat··on Sorry, we can't join your Slack
I guess my story was unnecessary, but I commented that I didn't read the article the way the person I responded to (and the person above him as well). I don't understand why the top rated comment is worded in a way that sounds like the article was bashing slack because the Author of the article doesn't understand how to focus...when I read the article and saw nothing that led me to believe the top level comment was on topic. So I commented.

If I am ok to carry on this tangent we are already on, I cannot wrap my head around a scenario where it would be appropriate for a member of a SaaS company, dev/PM/CTO/QA or what have you to be in a slack channel for one of their clients. It's completely unprofessional and should be avoided.

themoat··on Sorry, we can't join your Slack
I didn't read this as a slack good / slack bad article at all.

At my current job I was asked to join a client's slack group (added without my consent) and it was a nightmare. The problems have nothing to do with notifications or interruptions, but it gives them the implicit understanding that I am a custom developer for their needs. Since they can reach me at any time, they assume that I am going to fix their bugs, add their features, etc. It circumvents what I think is the proper procedure for work. I suspect that's more the heart of why the author is saying they aren't going to join their client's slack group.

themoat··on How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers
My wife and I did that for 2 years. It works, but like everything, there are trade offs.

It's great that you know your child is being raised by you and your partner. You aren't offloading the child to a babysitter and trusting daycare to raise them with your principles or just to your level of care.

The downside is crossing paths with your spouse in a 5 minute handoff. Rushed dinners to cram in as much adult interaction as you can before you do bedtime or rush to work. There are times when you meet up at a McDonalds to eat and trade cars.

I don't think we would have done it differently, but there were definitely periods of loneliness that both of us felt.

themoat··on We Have Ruined Childhood
Not from my experience. The kids on my block played all summer long on bikes, with hoses, and at the nearby park. I'm guessing from 5 or 6 different houses on the street, all different ages. Just kids being summer kids.

Same story when I visited family in Colorado. Just kids playing outside like kids. Coming over unsupervised to play with the kids.

Seems like I might not live in the areas where the sky is falling, but I see kids reading outside, playing outside, and generally being away from their parents all the time in my own neighborhood

themoat··on Mailchimp to Sendy: Cutting Email Costs
I mean, you could just as easily use a real reference for what it would cost.

You can either pay mailchimp, or you can pay your senior developer to set it up for $80/hr.

themoat··on Go Creeping In
We had a "discussion" on which formatter/linter to use for a different language. There were 2 choices and I bet we spend 300 man hours on nonsense. Everyone had to have their say.

You can decide TO use a linter, but then you just get to argue about which linter...

themoat··on Ask HN: Which editor do you use for JavaScript Development?
Neovim with coc.nvim.
themoat··on The Case for Rooms
There are a lot of people talking in this thread about the dangers of cooking in a kitchen that make it sound like a cheesy infomercial...

"Scalding your loved ones? Tired of shutting the oven door on your cat? Isn't there a better way? Closed floor plans!"

I've got kids. My number one complaint about my house is that I am shut off from everyone when I try to cook.

themoat··on The Price We Pay: How Little Most Bay Area Families Can Afford
Of course not.

I don't think his numbers are super accurate in his comment, but of course he isn't proposing a solution to the housing crisis, he's offering advice to anyone thinking of moving to SF.

I offer similar advice to people who want to become commercial helicopter pilots.

themoat··on Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'
I completely comprehend the bad things the platforms introduce, but pre-social media it was just really inconvenient to stay in touch with people way out of your area. Blogs were alright for it, but not great for 2 way communication in my memories.

I stayed in Peru for a couple years pre-facebook. I told friends and my host family I'd stay in touch and we all shared email addresses. I wrote less than 3 emails.

Next couple years go by and they start shooting friend requests and suddenly I am interacting with long lost friends, talking about their kids, jobs, and reminiscing about the dumb things we did together.

There are definitely other ways to communicate, but there's something about social media that reduces the effort required to connect with someone. It's irrelevant that you might change your address, phone number, or even email address. You have a fixed place that I can contact you and reach out. Oh, and it's the same website where I can find my favorite college roommate too...

themoat··on Bootcamps vs. College (2016)
This seems to fit my experience interviewing/hiring candidates over the last few years.

There's a certain type of "Bootcamp grad" that seems to fit well with my teams. Those people who got a degree and then found that they hated the field they worked in (biology, law, English teachers) have just come in and killed it for us.

I can't say, exactly, how that compares to CS grads, but I do know that every fresh Grad we've hired had to be hired on as an intern first to get them up to speed, while bootcamp grads were able to be productive from day 1.

Just my 2 cents.

themoat··on Interviews with developers who became managers
I did a fair chunk of interviews when I was just a dev. I loved it, and I took it very seriously in terms of vetting programming skill and practices. I also felt good offloading that burden from a good manager.

It was win-win for our team. YMMV

themoat··on The shady economics of ‘buy one, get one free’ deals
I took a fun cooking class in college that was targeted at home cooking.

We did double blind taste tests on nearly every type of food we could think of. It's still amazing to me how infrequently the brand name won in terms of flavor.

Take that as you will, sample size was only about 25 students and my memory might be flawed. But I'll never buy brand name chocolate chips again in my life, I remember that much.

themoat··on Goodbye, Slack. Hello, Spectrum
I used to work for a startup that competed in this space. The amount of articles, awards, and HN posts that our marketing team fabricated was unreal. We won awards we didn't deserve because the Awards company's owner was on our board. Every article out there was carefully created by our copywriter. Every review on all the comparison sites...all false.

When I see a Medium post recommending a new software over another (especially over Slack since that gives me flashbacks), I just assume that there's financial incentive on part of the writer.

themoat··on Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers
They actually added a new feature on Spotify where you can listen to songs that aren't currently in the top 40. You might enjoy that.
themoat··on Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company
Reminds me of this talk from Vincent Woo (creator of Coderpad)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8UwcyYT3z0

Really made me rethink my priorities and has had me change the kinds of things I do.

themoat··on Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company
My wife and I have missed the Trans-Siberian Orchestra every year for 10 years, but we REALLY want to go. It's almost a running joke at this point. This year I set about a dozen alerts that'll start going off at the end of summer to make sure I don't forget to get the tickets.
themoat··on Oslo made its city center basically car-free
I ride a motorcycle, but you and I "balance our books" very differently.
themoat··on 25 years of coding, and I'm just beginning
I've been thinking about a similar question for 4 or 5 years.

Should you be satisfied with being comfortable? If it's important for you to leave a legacy related to your hobbies or career field, then probably not. You have to be content with what you leave behind.

For me, I have reached a place where I would be at peace if I left a headstone that said, "Good father, good husband, kind person".

I'm not going to make meaningful changes in computer science, and I'm ok with that. Whether or not I make contributions to open source software won't give me more peace at the end of my life, so I don't pursue it. Is it ungrateful? Perhaps. But it's honest.

themoat··on Ask HN: What's the most likely way to earn a ton of money as a programmer
I'd say that the majority of these comments are fantastic advice for that path, then. The hardest part is actually going to be curbing your expenses, living well below your means, and investing soundly.
themoat··on Catholic Church Used Bankruptcy for Sexual-Assault Cases. Others Following Suit
https://outline.com/TMu6z6
themoat··on Why I left React for Vue
When I first started dabbling in front end code about 3 years ago, Vue really was easier for me to jump into. But part of that was the react didn't really have the simplest tutorials or articles on making a simple stupid page in the way that made logical sense to me.

Everything started with "Start with your webpack file" and I wanted to just swear off front end forever.

So vue was a breath of fresh air at the time. Then I started at a company where react was the norm and I can't imagine going back to vue at this point.

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