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DavidWanjiru

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news.ycombinator.com 9y ago

Which Password Manager Do You Recommend?

DavidWanjiru
1pts4
news.ycombinator.com 9y ago

Were you watching on TV when Challenger broke up?

DavidWanjiru
3pts6
news.ycombinator.com 9y ago

Would HN users have known asbestos was bad for us?

DavidWanjiru
4pts4
news.ycombinator.com 11y ago

How Do Maize Moisture Meters Work?

DavidWanjiru
2pts5
sockpuppet.org 11y ago

The Hiring Post

DavidWanjiru
2pts1
www.popularmechanics.com 11y ago

The 100 Year Old Electric Car

DavidWanjiru
34pts17
news.ycombinator.com 11y ago

Can HN Talk about Eric Garnier?

DavidWanjiru
2pts3
news.ycombinator.com 11y ago

What do you make of “The Prophets of Science Fiction”?/Recommend sci-fi writers

DavidWanjiru
1pts0
www.sitepoint.com 11y ago

The 100 Year Old Trick to Writing at 240 Words per Minute

DavidWanjiru
1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 11y ago

Ask HN: Product/Tool suggestion request

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4pts5
news.ycombinator.com 11y ago

Ask HN: How useful are the Cisco CCNA and CCNP networking classes?

DavidWanjiru
7pts13
news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Why can't I browse HN on my phone anymore

DavidWanjiru
1pts3
news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: What tools are needed to create an application that uses smart cards?

DavidWanjiru
1pts2
news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: What's the best way to charge/discharge a laptop battery?

DavidWanjiru
4pts1
yoast.com 12y ago

Don't use autofill in your browser

DavidWanjiru
129pts68
www.140characters.com 12y ago

(Another story on)How Twitter was Born (2009)

DavidWanjiru
2pts0
www.jwz.org 12y ago

Arduino based curtain automation

DavidWanjiru
82pts35
www.americanscientist.org 12y ago

100 or so Books that shaped a Century of Science

DavidWanjiru
1pts0
m.theatlantic.com 12y ago

Where Should I Go to College?

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1pts0
www.wired.com 12y ago

WhatKind of Genius are You? (Wired, 2006)

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1pts0
www.fastcolabs.com 13y ago

Pattern Languages in Architecture and Software

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2pts0
news.ycombinator.com 13y ago

How Do I Know the Usefulness of Amazon's "Frequently Bought Together" Feature?

DavidWanjiru
1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 13y ago

Is Amazon's "Frequently bought Together

DavidWanjiru
1pts0
m.guardian.co.uk 13y ago

Failed States Are A Western Myth

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3pts0
A profound apology 9 years ago

BS plauditory apology.

You don't get to call something you said "profound." Others can find it profound, but you can't. It's like a comedian finding themselves funny. It's normally the audience that finds the comedian funny.

Hacker News is not a trade union or some other special interest group where the nature of discussion topics is predictable and consistent. It's a group of people who start off with a special interest, tech, but are more broadly interested in life. If you want a forum exclusively about tech, HN is not it.

As to worshipping rich people, anything you consider worth people's time can be similarly dismissed as perfunctory worship of it.

Two points. One, my understanding of Paul's basic premise is that it's not the class quality that matters, it's the unicorns that matter. As in, in this game, you're not chasing good classes. You want the one or two superstars, even if they're in a crap class. Secondly, the analysis I'd find useful is one that looks at unicorns using hindsight. How early can you tell them apart? They are the ones we came here for, remember? It's a very hard task, like telling the gender of day-old chicks.

I hadn't noticed, and this image is just the gift that keeps on giving.

What do you mean it's Photoshop? Oh yeah, the box files. I hadn't noticed. The dude's leg looks a bit weir...WAIT, that's photoshop too! EVEN THE LAPTOP! Gosh, the whole thing is fake!

According to the permissions request dialogue, "...We [want to collect your data even after you're dropped off] to improve pickups, drop-offs, customer service and to enhance safety..."

I don't buy any of it. Here's why:

IMPROVE DROP-OFFS: The most improved drop-off that Uber can deliver is the one I, the passenger, gives them, either verbally to the driver, via GPS by them noting the point where I was dropped off, or via GPS by me entering my destination location. Normally, I ask to be dropped off where it's most convenient for me, and the most convenient for me is the best drop-off experience possible. Even if after being dropped off, I go to a final destination for which Uber reckons a better drop-off point than the one I chose exists, it's not for Uber to say, based on where I am going, what my best drop off point is. That's for me, the customer, to say. Since when does a cab tell you where to drop you off? Unless I don't know where I am going, in which case Uber already knows what the best drop off point is, and has no need to further improve it.

IMPROVE PICKUPS. Presumably, the pickup will be improved based on historical location data, which tells them, this guy actually goes/lives/drinks/et here, something we know coz we tracked him last time he used Uber. Again, when I board a cab, I go to the point of most convenience for me. I'd probably have a cab come right to my bedroom door inside my house if it were possible, but since it's not, I choose the next best possible point, which is normally the same place they dropped me off at if they're the ones who brought me here. Same argument applies: unless I'm a stranger, my choice of pickup point is the best pickup point experience possible, and needs no further improvement. If based on where I'm coming from, Uber reckon there's a better pickup point, it's not for them to say. They're a cab. A cab comes get you where you want it to come get you, the location of your bedroom door and other laws and issues permitting.

CUSTOMER SERVICE: This sounds tenuous. Nothing that I can think of that can be termed as good customer service from a cab company would be improved by tracking my movement after the cab has dropped me off. Some good customer service issues have nothing to do with my location, and the two that do are the ones I've discussed above.

ENHANCE SAFETY. Again, tenuous without more explanation. How does knowing where I go after you drop me off enhance safety either for myself or the driver?

I've seen a comment from some who says they work at Uber saying that this helps to figure out where the pick up spots for each address are, that a large building may have multiple points where people get picked up or dropped off. Which sounds reasonable, until you realize that the point that I got dropped off is the best one for me, which is why I chose it, and you, Uber, already know that because you've just dropped me off. Tracking me AFTER dropping me off doesn't make your knowledge of my best drop off more accurate, it makes it less accurate since I'm moving further and further away from the best drop off point as you continue to track me.

If I'm not mistaken, 1% in milk refers to the butter fat content, but if a chocolate is 60% sugar, isn't that by weight? Like if a bar is 100 grams, 60 grams is sugar? If that is how it works, you'll notice the missing sugar, I think.

"Ton of source material...but I haven't looked at any of it for more than 30 seconds so I can't be any judge of it," Isn't that like saying, "There may or may not have been an earthquake. Tons of seismometers around, but I haven't looked at the readings so I can't say."?

I've never been able to wrap my head around the scientific premise of hoping to observe radiation from the early universe. I studied physics in university but I was very crap at it and never graduated, so that might explain it.

The reason I can't is because I assume that the EM radiation that resulted from the Big Bang happened before we did (we as in our neck of the cosmos), and that radiation left the epicenter of the Big Bang before we did. Assuming that radiation has been moving radially outward since then, how can we hope to observe it yet it has a head start on us?

The Big Bang is not an event that happened in the universe. It's the event that brought forth the universe.

It's possible for us to observe, say, a supernova that exploded even before our solar system, for example, existed. But that supernova was an event in the universe, and it's light may take billions of years to reach another part of the universe and for entities in that part of the universe to now observe it, even if those entities didn't exist at the time the supernova exploded.

That I understand. But the Big Bang? Isn't that different? Isn't trying to observe the Big Bang a bit like trying to observe your own birth?

The only anecdote I can give where I know for a fact Facebook ads have a real and clear ROI is people who build pages and groups to sell stuff exclusively on Facebook. The 3 or so people I've asked tell me the ads work. Of course Facebook fully determines the "doesn't work" outcome as well, so...

Is it legally enforceable for a company to dictate what you can or cannot do with a phone that you bought from them? Sure, the terms said whatever they said, but is it enforceable/constitutional? I mean, people sell their phones all the time for whatever reason.

It depends. If the people are dying because the cars we make have break pads that haven't been certified as safe, and the reason they aren't certified is my boss said to not do it coz certification raises our costs by $1000 per car, yeah, I'd be bothered. Big as they come moral quandary.