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vorpalhex

16,318 karma · joined December 5, 2016

https://vorpalhex.com "me"[at]vorpalhex.com...
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vorpalhex··on The US tried to stop cartel money-laundering; devastated mom-and-pop businesses
The renunciation fee is $450. That is less than a single year of taxes.
vorpalhex··on The US tried to stop cartel money-laundering; devastated mom-and-pop businesses
There is no reputable study suggesting direct cash handouts help the longterm persistantly homeless.
vorpalhex··on The US tried to stop cartel money-laundering; devastated mom-and-pop businesses
You can and should be making explicit choices in that framework.

You should not buy phones connected to the mistreatment of the Uighur population - and that is doable.

If you think the US is doing more harm than good, you are allowed to move and surrender your citizenship.

And yes, that is literally why I don't support direct cash handouts to the homeless. You can feed them and house them, you can't throw money at them and expect a good outcome.

You should not cast your money as to do harm. If your money is the difference between your sister being homeless or not, then stop giving her money and pay her rent. Buy her grocery cards.

But if you directly contribute to harm, knowably, you are enabling that harm. This is not some weird novel part of ethics. It is in fact black and white.

vorpalhex··on The US tried to stop cartel money-laundering; devastated mom-and-pop businesses
You give your sister $100. You find out later that she uses $50 of that money to buy heroin and inject it in herself.

Do you keep giving her the $100?

Absolutely not! This isn't even a real question.

If you directly enable a person or group of people or country to harm themselves and others, you have a duty to stop doing it.

If US remittances are directly fueling the cartel which beats, rapes, murders and even engages in torture, then not only may the US cease that but it is plainly ethically bound to do so.

Yes, this will make it hard for Grandma to buy a car.

You can't fund the people who torture and rape random Mexican farmers so Grandma can buy a car.

> If you really want to eliminate the cartels make recreational drugs legal.

While murdering drug users with their own money may seem like a clever solution, you are in fact still doing murder just in long form.

vorpalhex··on The US tried to stop cartel money-laundering; devastated mom-and-pop businesses
The medical pipeline for opiate addiction has been gone for several years now.

Most users were exposed to fentanyl unknowingly through buying other tainted drugs, often expecting percocet or even ecstasy.

Some of these users do require methodone treatment, but you can't give drug users unregulated access to opiates. That is just not gonna work out. Either they are going to self taper ("stretching" their tail of their stash) or they are going to end up in a hospital and get tapered by a professional.

vorpalhex··on The US tried to stop cartel money-laundering; devastated mom-and-pop businesses
I am against marijuana but I think it's clear legalizing it successfully starves the cartel of a lot of drug financing (and therefore we should both legalize it and have public campaigns against using it, ala alcohol).

Even the weird state based legalization has caused the cartels to pivot into things like avocado farming and mining.

Drug users don't seem to be overly preoccupied with what drug they use. Probably shifting them towards lower risk choices (pot, ketamine) and aggressively crack down on dealers is a winning combo.

(A lot of low level dealers are just graduated drug users but the line between buying and selling is a large one and dealers do immense harm while also shielding more dangerous criminals. Incentives against dealing incl aggressive enforcement are powerful at dissuading low level dealers, which in turn starves the criminal organizations.)

vorpalhex··on The US tried to stop cartel money-laundering; devastated mom-and-pop businesses
It surprises me how much Americans don't understand how deeply the cartel is in every transaction. Yes, sending money to Grandma to pay for a car is funding the cartel who probably got paid to make the car available. Grandma may even pay small direct bribes to the cartel just to be able to live her life.

Either all of Mexico can move to the US (probably not a winning solution) or we can make Mexico a safe and excellent country again, and that means getting rid of the cartel.

And yes, other countries have their issues too and we should help stabilize those countries as well.

If the Mexican government can fix their cartel issue, we can go back to normal remittances. Until then the US will make policy choices to resolve problems.

As always, the salt of the earth people will pay the cost for politicians being bad at things.

vorpalhex··on Bitcoin trail, Google cookies and Uber Eats orders help tie man to Steam malware
Vacuumed my secure lockup about once a month. At one point someone just brought in a vacuum so we didn't have to keep bothering to walk down the hall and borrow one from cleaning folks.

Have arranged travel, run big group meals, and setup parties. At one point setup a golf event.

Have flown across the US many times, most of the time was there to just whiteboard and mediate in practice.

Have worked with lawyers on vendor contracts (was how I learned to negotiate partially).

Have had a bunch of side adventures in managing locks, safes, etc as part of my day job. Plenty of random physical builds.

A large part of what I actually do is mediation between parties so that I can get permission to do whatever business function actually needs to happen.

Oh and spent a few years wiping down a breakroom as a habit and making coffee. Incidentally became good friends with a major CTO due to that.

vorpalhex··on Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
Everything is a parents issue.

If you are depending on the police to keep your kid from doing drugs, you have failed as a parent. I promise you, your kid can locate drugs better than the cops can arrest low level dealers.

You as a parent need to teach your kid how to behave (mostly through things like teaching ethics and morals) not by running a safe prison until your kid is 18.

And yes, I am a parent of multiple kids.

vorpalhex··on ChatGPT, Roblox to fall under strictest EU rules for platforms
It mostly just seems like the EU is becoming China.

Soon they will have to firewall off most of the internet. After that comes VPNs.

At least the EU is unlikely to agree on voting anyone in as a leader for life.

vorpalhex··on Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
That's a parent issue, the same as if their kid has a secret stash of cocaine or enjoys dancing in traffic.

No technical measure can fix stupid.

vorpalhex··on Bitcoin trail, Google cookies and Uber Eats orders help tie man to Steam malware
Software engineers. None of us work for YC, we are based in Texas. No oil/gas, nor defense, nothing like that.

Years ago I had a recruiter that wanted to hawk me and I asked for 180k comp and he told me it was "impossible". Hung up, was hired at 185k a few weeks later. Wasn't even much of a negotiation when I asked for it.

1. Be willing to accept non-cash comp. Stock of various forms, etc. This works with later stage companies better for obvious reasons.

2. Go into all negotiations ready to explain to the other side what they are buying. Remain calm if not slightly bored. Repeat your ask as if the other side has forgotten them (that sort of bored, calm tone). Do not argue.

3. Actually deliver business value. None of this "Well that's not my job". If I need to fly to a datacenter and run a power off test, I will. If I need to mop the floor and wipe down the breakroom, I'll do that too. Own problems, not positions.

vorpalhex··on Bitcoin trail, Google cookies and Uber Eats orders help tie man to Steam malware
None of my peers went to any school of note, nor did I. A fair bit of community college, some lower ranked state unis, and one guy did a bootcamp.

All well above 200k.

vorpalhex··on Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?
My strong photographer opinion is that you should buy the oldest action camera that meets any resolution/framerate needs and treat it almost like a disposable. Buy on sales or used units. Use them on shots you genuinely are unwilling to use a mirrorless for - strapped to the front of a bike, magnetically attached to the side of a car, strapped to someone jumping in a lake.
vorpalhex··on You're Not a Better Engineer Because You Type Git Commands by Hand
Similar arguments have been made about Git UIs and automated tools, and of course most people who depend on such things also depend on others to bail them out in difficult situations with git.

So it just becomes a question about whether or not it's part of your core value proposition. For many developers, the answer is obviously no. And then outsourcing those things to automation, including LLMs, seems fine.

But if you can outsource your job, so can everyone else. If the LLM (or ide or any other tool) just needs someone to vaguely press the "next" button to do your job, well, your boss and everyone else can press that button too.

Outsource carefully. Know the value you provide.

vorpalhex··on Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore
> without corporations hiring people to undermine wages there would be pressure to pay higher wages for low skill low education workers

Supply and demand. If you increase labor supply, prices go down.

More workers will in fact depress labor prices.

> Higher skilled and educated workers are making less too.

This is outright false. Skilled trades are suffering from an inability to fill vacancies and salaries are going up.

> There is a systemic effort to gut the middle class

The middle class is shrinking.. because the middle class is becoming upper class.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/upper-middle-class-income-us-wh...

The middle class earners are earning enough to become upper class.

vorpalhex··on Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore
Aside from less than a quarter point (0.24) from Covid, wages have in fact risen with inflation and that small difference is also likely to disppear soon.

https://usafacts.org/answers/are-wages-keeping-up-with-infla...

It is in fact rents, especially with mandatory add-ons. The actual cost of renting a place is a lot more than the direct rent payment.

vorpalhex··on Age verification tech could put children at greater risk, says think tank
"If I see you on social media, I'm grounding you for two weeks with no phone."

You can't fix a behavior issue with tech, just like you can't fix your computer by being good.

vorpalhex··on Meta's ships facial recognition on smart glasses
I'm a parent of two, one of whom is a baby. I rock a Sony zv-e10ii.

Image quality is real. That glasses camera is teeny tiny. At the most basic layer, it's going to look like a bad camera from decades ago by the time your kids are old enough to want to see those photos.

Meta sells that device to generate data and profit from "services". Zuck said so directly in an earnings call: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/zuckerberg-explained-ai-glass...

You are the frog being boiled. Your glasses are the pot.

vorpalhex··on Meta's ships facial recognition on smart glasses
Buy a proper camera. Your memories will be a lot higher quality and you'll go from creepy guy uploading toddler footage for Zuck to watch to someone who loves their kid enough to run a real camera.
vorpalhex··on Meta's ships facial recognition on smart glasses
Just drop the gl. Seems to get the point across.
vorpalhex··on Microsoft 0-day feud escalates as researcher threatens another exploit dump
Microsoft chose to run a shoddy bounty program. The researcher tried to do the right thing.

Microsoft could have prevented this. They were warned. It's their own fault.

The exploit exists whether or not the researcher reports it. They didn't make the exploit.

vorpalhex··on Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks
So which is it?

Do people need structure to occupy their time or will they provide it themselves?

Does school not count as "generous allowances to experiment"? Why not?

Under your definition, what does? Can you actually point to something that satisfies your definition?

vorpalhex··on Period tracking app, Flo, found to be selling user data to Meta
Language is consumed by people, not machines.

You don't have to speak like a lawyer.

There is no intersex person waiting to jump out and yell accusatory things at you because you didn't include sufficient asterisks or you said statements that are 99.9999% true.

vorpalhex··on US fired 1k JASSM cruise missiles in 37 days. Lockheed makes 396 per year
Venezuela has bulk freed their political prisoners and is on track to hold elections.

And I think you will find Ukraine lacks the necessary satellite constellations to enable very long distance corrected boat strikes. Yet strangely Ukraine has suddenly been successfukly performing trajectory corrected boat strikes.. at very long distances.. Seemingly launched from not Ukraine.

Or maybe Russian oil terminals just keep magically catching fire... along with their ships.. You know, the ones the US didn't interdict.

Could be. Could be.

vorpalhex··on US fired 1k JASSM cruise missiles in 37 days. Lockheed makes 396 per year
Out of $188B of authorized aid for Ukraine, $109B has been disbursed incl 2025/2026 deliveries, with an additional $72B continuing to be disbursed per original timeline.

https://www.cfr.org/articles/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine

You have to get at least the most basic facts correct. If you get even those wrong, you need to throw out your entire worldview and the sources that generated that worldview and start over.

vorpalhex··on US fired 1k JASSM cruise missiles in 37 days. Lockheed makes 396 per year
Then taking down the Maduro regime and the Iranians who are both Russian allies, arming Ukraine, and enabling out-of-theater sinking of Russian ships?
vorpalhex··on F-15E jet shot down over Iran
That tweet is from yesterday.

Iran tweets about taking down an American jet basically daily. By their count we are down 40 f-35s, 4 aircraft carriers and thousands of MQ-9s.

vorpalhex··on Apple removes iPhone vibe coding app from app store
Steam doesn't prevent me from running other games on my pc.
vorpalhex··on Having Kids (2019)
Your experience is the opposite of mine.

I can't wait to play with my 3 year old and 1 year old. I get so mad at work when I have an odd late meeting because it is keeping me from them.

My three year old helps me build furniture (he gets screws started, counts out parts, helps apply glue). I love showing him synths and instruments and seeing his face light up.

My one year old is a cuddle monster who likes listening to jazz with me. She also really enjoys when the cat climbs up on our lap and she gets to pet it.

I don't know your situation, but most miserable parents I know see their kid as something to manage, like some kind of annoying work underling.

I see my kids as little detectives.

My goal isn't to solve their case or even help them approach it in the right way. It's to give them an occasional hint (or step stool), keep them from danger, and help them discover the correct way to behave.

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