HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

zinckiwi

749 karma · joined January 6, 2017

submissionscomments
zinckiwi··on The most official water costs $120k a gallon
That’s 02025 thinking.
zinckiwi··on Underarm bowling incident of 1981
There is still the remote possibility of a fumble or tackling the ball away from the defence in those cases. In the underarm bowling incident it was made physically impossible to win. In baseball terms, he had to hit a home run with the ball on the ground.

(Though as a non-American, I am indeed mystified why the kneel is legal and not regarded as delay of game!)

zinckiwi··on Hong Kong's Famous Bamboo Scaffolding Hangs on (For Now)
Grew up in HK. In typhoon season the bamboo scaffolding has a little give and flex that metal scaffolding doesn’t, and you’d be glad for that.
zinckiwi··on Tech terms I was pronouncing wrong
Ih-DEM-po-tent. Also: huh-MODGE-en-us. Like nails on a chalkboard to me when I hear ho-mo-GENE-ee-us.
zinckiwi··on Tech terms I was pronouncing wrong
I go with tupple. There is precedent (see: tuppence).
zinckiwi··on Tech terms I was pronouncing wrong
Or irritate _everyone_ and pronounce it with a soft J. Zhif.
zinckiwi··on M4 MacBook Pro
Comparing against the intel era is a bit apples (excuse me) to oranges. Technical generation gaps aside, Apple products hold value well.
zinckiwi··on Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)
Recommend Roald Dahl's "Boy" for a fascinating glimpse.
zinckiwi··on Shedding light on alcohol's long shadow
I have. I was a 0-2 beer/ day drinker, usually when cooking dinner, so hardly problematic. Lots of “empty calories” and a growing tide of evidence though. I reasoned: if it’s easy to give it up, then it’s a no-brainer. If it’s _not_ easy to give it up, all the more reason.
zinckiwi··on TouchArcade Is Shutting Down
Price anchoring, I suspect. Apparently, people simply won't accept mobile games at "game prices" ($20-60) instead of "mobile prices" ($0-3). I am the opposite, refusing to engage with anything freemium, but I am also in the clear minority.
zinckiwi··on Peloton to charge $95 activation fee for used bikes
A fee, I suspect, that exists solely to be waived.
zinckiwi··on Oceans May Have Already Seen 1.7°C of Warming
I am not an expert so this is just my gut talking, but I suspect that the effect of emissions on the energy that the planet absorbs from the sun dwarfs the heat that our machines produce by some very large multiple.
zinckiwi··on How to quit cars
We live 20 minutes' walk from our kids' two schools. They walk. The majority of our neighbours do not. I agree, bonkers.
zinckiwi··on Toyota plug-in hybrids to offer 124-mile electric-only range
I'm thinking: cross town errands, 40 or 50 miles round-trip, traffic, maybe it's winter and the usual range is cut by a third... plus general headroom to reduce anxiety. ~100 miles seems like a good target for the 99th percentile of days.
zinckiwi··on Toyota plug-in hybrids to offer 124-mile electric-only range
This seems like the goldilocks zone to me. A day's urban driving comfortably, and fossil fuels for the very occasional long trip.
zinckiwi··on Ask HN: Tell me about how you bombed a technical interview
I never had a problem with the explicit lifecycle methods in class components, and the concept of a functional component effectively being the render method in isolation. To me there’s only one clear advantage to hooks and that’s sheer reduction in raw lines of code. Having said that, it’s a pretty huge advantage for something like redux.
zinckiwi··on More students are turning away from college and toward apprenticeships
American translation: graduating with anything other than a 4.0 or a 1.0 is wasted.
zinckiwi··on Front end developers: stop moving things that I’m about to click on
I don't know how they did it -- probably a highly sophisticated combination of machine learning and focus groups -- but YouTube will reliably dismiss the video controls brought up by a tap pricely 60ms before I reach the moment in the video that I wanted to pause on.
zinckiwi··on Front end developers: stop moving things that I’m about to click on
There's probably a bit of the algorithm that is dutifully noting your long-time, consistent interest in n, and making sure to reward you for your dependability by canonising it ever-stronger in your profile.
zinckiwi··on Front end developers: stop moving things that I’m about to click on
At least they have the precisely correct blue, though. https://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.htm...
zinckiwi··on Meta fires a software engineer two days after he relocated from India to Canada
Catch-22. You often can't legally search for a job as a tourist. Typically, like the US H1-B, a sponsoring company needs to "prove" that they tried and failed to source the employee onshore first, and therefore immigration is the interest of the domestic company.

I'm separated from my family right now -- wife and kids -- while waiting on an immigration process that has taken far longer than we were expecting. I assure you that any immigration-related worry can seem outsized.

zinckiwi··on Meta fires a software engineer two days after he relocated from India to Canada
I’m not knowledgeable about Canadian work visas specifically, but many countries extend them only within the context of specific employment. In other words, he may need to take what he can get, in a rough economy, under immense stress (as someone who has lived in that situation before can attest to), lest he have to go all the way back.
zinckiwi··on New Zealand plunges into recessionary spiral
As another commenter said, no choice. That's just how it works. Conversely, we're confused why banks in the US are willing to do a 30-year fix in the first place. That's an awfully long time into an unknown future to commit to anything, especially in an industry so conservative and ruthless as banking.
zinckiwi··on New Zealand plunges into recessionary spiral
In my experience the concept of a 30-year fixed mortgage is uniquely (or close to it) American. Certainly in NZ anything beyond a two-year fix is rare.
zinckiwi··on A large collection of fraudulent web stores
An Amazon?
zinckiwi··on Nascar driver stuns to qualify for championship with GameCube move
You mean it’s not illegal. It’s absolutely cynical — “how can I win this game by stopping my opponent from playing?”
zinckiwi··on Nascar driver stuns to qualify for championship with GameCube move
At least this is open play with ball in hand, and there is danger there. I fully admit I am not very familiar with American football, but the completely accepted "taking a knee" to run down as much as two minutes of the clock at the end of the game strikes me as far more cynical.
zinckiwi··on macOS Ventura is now available
Especially when global search is only ever a Cmd-Space away.
zinckiwi··on 75% of the time we spend with our kids in our lifetime will be spent by age 12
I have 4 kids whom I love dearly, and I don't _regret_ having them. But often I wish I could be in a sci-fi movie where I get to live two lives simultaneously; one with, one without.

It's not as much the excitement of my alternate life, or the reservation of more resources for myself (money, time, etc.) though that, selfishly, sounds nice. It's mostly the stress and ever-present burden of being a parent. I could do without it sometimes.

zinckiwi··on Using a framework will harm the maintenance of your software
Sure. But not using a framework will harm the maintenance of your software more.
Page 1 of 5Next →