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valeness

222 karma · joined September 6, 2016

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valeness··on Twitch source code and customer data has reportedly been leaked
I sub to twitch streamers I watch because dollar per hour it's the cheapest form of entertainment besides torrenting for me.

There was a stint during the GTA V RP craze I had it on in the background and watched it for approximately 6-8 hours every day. I subbed to one streamer for like 5 bucks.

This averages out to like 2 cents/day for 240 hours of entertainment. Cheaper than netflix, cheaper than cable, cheaper than hulu... You catch my drift. I don't know how this is different than me paying $80 to spend a night out at the movies with my wife, other than it being insanely cheaper?

valeness··on Are software engineering “best practices” just developer preferences?
Are there not also mediocre traditional architects? Why are you comparing architects that push the boundaries of human achievment with the most mediocre of software architects who just advise people use AWS?

Words change over time and it's not like programmers AREN'T pushing the limits of human technology. What is much more advanced than your cellphone right now? Or the software that drives the Super Colliders? Or the software that runs an MRI?

I agree that our industry mis-appropriates the title "Engineer", but there is no reason to be so dismissive either.

valeness··on YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content
I don't see this same energy when peope want to nationalize internet or electric companies. Why is it that only when media companies moderate the content available on their platform do we suddenly not care about property rights?

If we're talking about regulating large corporations because they're monopolizing resources I'd much rather start in the energy sector to set some precedent before we just force youtube and facebook to allow nazis and anti-vaxxers to spout off whatever they want during a global crisis.

valeness··on YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content
> "Let stupid run it's course"

4.5 Million Deaths Later...

valeness··on Lockdown, distance learning likely to increase social class achievement gap
This is almost impossible to quantify because we can't determine how the pandemic would have played out without lockdowns. It could have gone from 600,000 dead in the United States, to 2 million. (Again, we don't know, it could very well have been less than that, or more. :shrug:)

I would say losing parents or grandparents (any primary caretakers really) to COVID would be far more impactful on a child's development than missing a year of school.

I will gladly concede that lockdowns did cause harm, but "more harm than good" is something I'm still not seeing as true.

valeness··on Renting a car will be a pain until at least 2022
Nothing about the pandemic made my apartment a miserable place to live. It was alaways a miserable place to live.

* There is no bike parking available, so 2 bikes occupy a large portion of my living space * The sidewalks outside my apartment are small and in a state of disrepair * Intersections are cyclist and pedestrian hostile making it hard to go anywhere without it being a stressful experience * The landlord refuses to fix my A/C when it's 118 degrees farenheit outside, meaning it is often 92F inside the apartment (And no, citing the municipal code that says this illegal does nothing and nobody has the energy to hire a lawyer right now) * The bus stop has been in disrepair to the point where it was recently just removed altogether meaning I have to walk a mile to get to the next one. * The next nearest bus stop has no shade or place to sit * I can't mount my TV to the wall or make any changes to make the small space more comfortable (like hanging shelves or mounting hooks)

I want nothing more than effective urban living, but I have yet to see it. So from my perspective, I'm not sure what was really "lost" during the pandemic that wasn't already broken.

Also, since I see some replies mentioning it, I would rather my parents ad grandparents be alive than have any of the above be fixed. So I'd be careful to judge too harshly and gain some perspective about "strict" measures to curb the spread of the pandemic.

valeness··on The Coronavirus Is Here Forever
yes
valeness··on Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company
Forgive me, but what's wrong with this?
valeness··on Student Loans. Medical Debt. Criminal Justice Fees. Cancel It All.
Are we expecting full financial literacy from people who can't legally decide if taking a shot of whiskey is in their best interest or not? Or from the same people who often cannot even rent a car? Or people with no credit history? An entire forum of what I consider to be some of the smartest adults in the world (myself excluded lol), can't even agree on what this "debt oligation" means; and we're supposed to place this burden of understanding on people who have to raise their hand to ask to go to the bathroom?

We have controls on taking on debt for the other 99% of credit line applications, why is this one so significantly different?

valeness··on Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may produce lasting immunity
How is our credit score system much different than a centralized database used to control individuals?
valeness··on Always Be Quitting
This seems... Shortsighted?

You can get any development project done without documentation; I don't think that's up for debate. The question is, can you make changes to this project, improve on it, explain it to another team during an acquisition or due diligence: 5+ years down the line? And if you can, will that new development timeline be accelerated if you had documentation and diagrams to work from?

What happens when a new CEO comes in, hires a new Engineering Manager, and 85% of the devs quit in protest? Will a new team be as effective as possible without that documentation?

In my experience the above scenarios are quite common in start-up and "scale-up" size companies. Where there are a lot of things in flux and nobody has a plan 5 years out. Then, lo and behold, it's 5 years later and everyone is stuck picking up the slack instead of developing new/improved products.

And you're right, it can be a case of misalignment of goals and vision; not everyone cares about the long term. But if your company isn't thinking of problems further out than 6 months then you might have a different problem to address...

valeness··on If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund
Yes, although in hindsight it's easy to say that was poorly executed. It looks far too big and tried to be more than it should have been in my opinion. I'm thinking more along the lines of small neighborhoods on the edge of a city that can provide stronger logistical support.

Closer to Sun City Arizona.

> ... This caught the eye of the FTC, which said the advertising was deceptive and ordered the city’s developers to stop ...

This is also an interesting point in the article. Was it actually a scam or just overly ambitious and poorly executed?

valeness··on If you sell a house these days, the buyer might be a pension fund
I think the disruption will come from the civil planning side of the equation. When we can figure out how to build a city on the edge of Arizona that people actually want to live in then we can begin to leverage more efficient and automated building techniques like 3d printing houses and stuff.

It takes more than houses; also entertainment, food, infrastructure, jobs, etc. Otherwise, you're 100% right, location is king and nobody wants to move away from a fun/profitable/valuable city to live in an abandoned mining town in Oklahoma just so they can own a home.

As dystopian as it might sound, I wonder if there is some way to "crowdfund" or "preorder" a new township location. Everyone signs up, pledges like 1,000 USD or something with a lease extending at least 3+ years. And developers can use that money to build an entirely new township in a location with cheaper land. This might help alleviate the problems that come along during a cold start with requiring critical mass adoption before a location is desireable to live in. (Not suggesting this exact course because having an entire town owned by a single developer sounds like a capitalist hellscape; just thinking out loud, I don't know what the actual solution would be)

I believe something similar is already happening with something like the Culdesac project. (I have no affiliation with this project, just so happen to live near it and have heard about it a few times) : https://culdesac.com/

valeness··on WeWork documentary explores a decade of delusion
What innovative things did he do?
valeness··on They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions
What makes you think that there has been a recent loss of "humans just talking"? Seems like a fairly subjective position to take when I, as a younger person, feel incredibly connected to a lot of society via online communication.

I have also however, never had a good experience knocking on neighbors doors. If someone is being incredibly inconsiderate, like say blasting music at 1am, then why would they be more considerate if I knocked on their door?

A fully grown adult living in an apartment complex should be able to know that sound travels, they have already made the decision to be inconsiderate. Are they supposed to change their mind because I appeal to them face to face?

valeness··on Fuckin' user interface design, I swear
I think it's important to note that product lead, system architect, and UX architect are distinct roles, each with distinct responsibilities, for a reason.

It's not my job as a coder to care about your problem past what has been described to me. It is your job, as product lead, to care about the problem and design a sufficient information architecture, subdomain map, and other documentation to model your problem.

This goes both ways. It is not your job to care about my problems past how it impacts the product. I don't expect you to know or care about how we design the software or how it is implemented; whether we use snake or camelCase, if we use openssl or pgp, if we choose mysql or postgresql.

I just think it's important to outline that much of your comment can be applied in the inverse, and saying that "It's less work to become a mediocre programmer than to intimately understand the problem", is the same as saying "It's less work to become a mediocre product analyst than it is to intimately understand how to code".

I agree with your last point, it's important for every department to have humility and empathy for the problems of their peers. But, it's not a problem to be figured out by designers and coders; it's instead an issue that extends further and requires effort from everyone involved, and at every level, to support.

valeness··on YouTube removed a Cybersecurity channel without much reason
This sounds like an incredibly bigoted, or at best ignorant, stance to take. I think it can be safe to assume that the GP meant that LGBTQ creators can be marginalized based on how they act, look, or simply identify. There is nothing about those 3 things that telegraphs "a man's bedroom activity".
valeness··on REST vs. GraphQL – A search for evidence on which is better
Wouldn't it be more resource efficient to traverse the graph ahead of time and prefetch all related resources with a single query?
valeness··on U.S. Accuses Google of Illegally Protecting Monopoly
Doesn't this violate the ToS for a lot of phones and providers?
valeness··on Robinhood launches 3% checking account
This is anecdotal, and not explicitly about ATMs, but I have had those "Pay your bills here" machines at 7/11 and other convenience stores mishandle my money a couple times. It would report I paid $150 instead of $200, missing a single $50 note.

This was resolved after about 2 hours on the phone with the company who manages the machines, but I still don't use them anymore.

valeness··on Salesforce CEO: tech billionaires 'hoard their money' and won't help homeless
I would think it could be argued that the incredibly rich benefit more from public infrastructure.

Do you still agree with your statement if Amazon had to pay a toll for every shipment?

valeness··on Salesforce CEO: tech billionaires 'hoard their money' and won't help homeless
I would be very interested in a source on this.
valeness··on The Big List of RPG Plots
I am in the "Building MVP" stage of creating a platform for exactly this. Matching people of different disciplines to teams and projects they would be suited for, specifically in the gamedev space.

Do you have any thoughts or wants/needs out of a platform like this? I would be happy to hear any input you'd have :)

valeness··on Uniqlo cut 90% of staff at one warehouse by replacing them with robots
From my understanding classic Marxists are very pro-gun, as a necessity to protect the rights of workers from the ruling class.

"The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. [...] Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary." ~Karl Marx - Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League

Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-l...

valeness··on Ask HN: Which roleplaying games do you play apart from Dungeons and Dragons?
I'm pretty fond of White Wolf's games like "Scion". Where you get to play the offspring of a god and mortal.

Also, you can't go wrong with a good game of Cyberpunk

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