DrBoring

earning money off of your looks I'm assuming your taking about the sex workers of OnlyFans. I find your attitudes a bit dismissive and offensive. These are real humans with real feelings that you're talking about with such little regard.

Plus, I earn money off of my natural intelligence. I didn't do anything to gain it in the first place, I just happened to have intelligent parents.

doesn't qualify as hard-working job

Two questions:

1. Why doesn't it qualify as a job if they are earning income?

2. Why should someone have to "work hard" to earn a living? If have a high-value easy-to-sell product, then why work harder than you need to?

I like to think of it this way:

Revenue != Usefulness (to the users of the app)

Revenue == Usefulness (to the recipient of the revenue)

Analogy to non-software biz:

1. CandyCo buys ChocolateCo

2. CandyCo changes ChocolateCo recipe to use less expensive ingredients, generating new revenue for CandyCo, but less tasty chocolates for ChocolateCo's long time customers.

3. The new revenue has disparate usefulness for the two interested parties.

I configured my kid's tablet to use AdGuard's public DNS https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html

No more in-app ads.

Strange thing, I tried it on my FireTV to block youtube ads, but it didn't work. I wouldn't be surprised if the FireTV monkies around with user settings. The other explanation could be that youtube uses the same hostname for videos and ads, so the DNS blocking can't distinguish.

I ended up side-loading a 3rd party YT client that doesn't play ads. https://smartyoutubetv.github.io/

I have this idea for a chorded VR keyboard that's modeled after a drum kit or xylophone.

I predict that once you learn the chords enough with muscle memory, you'll be able to take off the headset and just type with the hand wands.

This quote reminds me of a book I just finished: "The Pathless Path" by Paul Millerd https://think-boundless.com/the-pathless-path/

It's about rejecting the default career path which our society considers normal and desirable. The default path is the one where you go to school, enter a career, work the career until you retire ... etc.

I have been a lot of trouble lately figuring out why I'm so unhappy with my career. I knew I was on the wrong path, but I couldn't see the next step on my trail in life. This book made me see that there are plenty of people living happily off the default path. The books made me more determined to seek the pathless path.

I suggest reading it for anyone who is feeling listless in their career and needs a fresh new perspective.

I like the idea, I'll fill out your form later today.

Feedback on the website:

On the graphic at the bottom where you overlay different models of phone:

1. I think the red/green/blue borders would benefit from more contrast. It's hard for my eyes to distinguish.

2. I think you should add a deck of cards to the graphic. It would provide a frame of reference for scale.

... P.S. I just noticed the "Extrapolating from past models, the Pixel 10 will be roughly the size of California" below the graphic. If the purpose of the graphic was purely to accompany that joke, then I guess ignore my suggestions.

Although, a deck of cards may contribute to the joke. Hmmm

unhinged

I have this speculative theory that Elon Musk's public behavior is a complex long term ruse. I suspect his odd behavior is intentionally designed to get other to underestimate him. Consider it a mental form of the drunken fist martial arts style [1], where a fighter will use unpredictable body movements to confuse the opponent.

I use the word "theory" intentionally. I have explainable reasons for how I formed this theory. But now is not the place for that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunken_boxing

I could never have read Atlas Shrugged if not for the audio book. I've always struggled with staying focused while reading a book. I'm too easily distracted.

If you are actually interested in learning more about the ideas presented in the book, I suggest you get a copy of the audio book. You might be able to find it at your local library ... thought I can't imagine how many CDs that would be. It's on Audible too, and other less official online sources.

For me, it's was sort of eye opening to read the book. It smoothed out some chips on my shoulder that drove my cynical view in life. Even though it was fiction, I still empathized with the character's struggles. I could connect it to real world events and human behavior that I had observed.

There are some books that help you see the world through different eyes. For me, Atlas Shrugged was an effective one.

The Fountainhead was similar. I connected with the frustration of young Wynand's attempts at grade school, only to find himself surrounded by dumb children and incompetent adults.

Glad to see someone else noticed the similarity.

I was more subtle in my comment, hoping that someone would pick up the thread and point it out.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31315171

Trains derailing regularly is consider acceptable and to be expected, infrastructure being tasked with jobs for which it was not designed, calls for more resources ignored, policy makers prioritizing profit over safe and efficient transportation of goods.

This sounds like something from a fictional dystopian novel.

P.P.S. Minecraft with my daughter. It's the first survival play-through for both of us.

Interesting little article. To me, it speaks like the author is a bit remorseful for spending so much time on academic pursuits, and not building important social skills.

I can recall in my youth making the assumption that someone was entirely stupid because they didn't share my breadth of knowledge. Like the author, I never considered that they spent their time in pursuit of other knowledge.

I'm not sure where that inclination originated. It seems like a modeled behavior, but I can't think from where I learned it. Or perhaps it's just human nature, and the behavior we need to taught is to appreciate how vastly different everyone is from yourself.

P.S. It's funny to see the replies to this post where the people thought the topic was "Ask HN: What video game are you playing right now?"

Eh, it's one thing to know a highly memorable quote. It's another to remember the following line.

I've listened to the audiobooks of that series so many times.

Tangent, they got Simon Jones to read for book 6. which i thought was a mistake. He played Arthur in he radio dramas. It made the audiobook hard to follow because every character sounded like Authur.

I was making a reference the next line in the book:

"Very deep," said Arthur, "you should send that in to the Reader's Digest. They've got a page for people like you."

I feel the same way about my time in elementary school. My theory is that it was boredom that made school time feel so slow. Summer vacation always seemed to fly by.

Sounds like a deep quote I read from that page in Reader's Digest.

I like to use DEBT for times when I'm writing code that I know are poor practices, and will need to be refactored, but I'm in a mood where I just want to get something built that I can see and UI test.

that this should be intrinsic to product design at this point

I don't think it is feasible to engineer products in a way which optimizes their disposal. Certainly that is not something most consumers are concerned with. Surely if it were, there would be fewer manufacturers selling junk fall-apart products.

Politicians should be melted at the stake (pour molten plastic over them) - as they have failed to hold ZERO petroleum (plastics) producing company TRULY accountable for anything.

I find it unlikely that many politicians are interested in holding to account any plastics manufacturer for the pollution caused by their products. But, for exactly what should they be held accountable ?

And, on whose onus the proper disposal of plastics products? I say it's the consumer, not the manufacturer.

I worked at a startup where the single room bathroom opened into the kitchenette. It's rather unpleasant to smell your co-worker's poo as you're heating up your lunch.

I'm not sure if the office space was like that when they leased it, or if they had it designed that way intentionally due to space constrains. But when they expanded the office, they missed the opportunity to change the bathroom so it opened into a hallway of the new square-footage.

Does it become toxic micro particles in our waters, bodies?

I think the answer to that question lays somewhere between maybe and probably.

I'm curious, what made you bring up the point ? Is micro-particle poisoning a common concern for you. Or perhaps it was it the context of micro-particles being used in the aforementioned products which have short ownership-periods ?

I'm not trying to dismiss your concern, I'm just curious why bring it up now.

On the topic of shortly-owned-products, I for one have a dislike for cheap plastic beach toys. For example, the retailer Dollar Tree sells plastic sand buckets that break at an amount of force easily exerted by a child. At the beach where I vacation, you can peer into any trashcan and find broken sand toys and foam boogie boards which only break after one day of use.

In my experience as a software developer, I've grouped my peers into a few different categories. This is just a rough estimate based a small sample set, there are probably various gradients in-between.

1. Super coders: These are the coders who write the algorithms that pave the way for coders below them.

2. Natural coders: Competent coders who take to the craft easily. Can easily learn new things, but probably won't be designing the next great video codec. (I fall here)

3. Amateur coders: that somehow got hired. These are the coders that you curse because you're always cleaning up after them.

...

I have a theory that the same medical professionals have similar categories. This theory was first formed when I once saw a doctor who, on my first visit, regaled me with stories of taking Uber into the city for a night of drinking.

I'd put this guy in the lowest category of medical professionals. He's there to make money by providing a service with little regard for the long term outcomes of his patients.

There is more to the ranking than his crass unprofessional behavior. Upon leaving the appointment, I was given a card with a request that I rate him on some rate-my-doctor.com ... It had the same slimy feeling as one of those "give us 5 stars" cards found inside the box of many product sold on Amazon.

I wonder if this tech will lead to better quality audio from toys/books/greeting-cards that produce sound. I often wonder if the poor quality in such applications is due to the tiny speaker, or a mixture of the playback hardware and low audio bitrate.

the thin-film loudspeaker could provide active noise cancellation in clamorous environments, such as an airplane cockpit, by generating sound of the same amplitude but opposite phase; the two sounds cancel each other out.

What would such an environment sound like? For example, how far would your voice travel when speaking to the person sitting next to you?

I liked it when StackOverflow introduced features to elicit better community manners. For example, the prompt that say something to the effect of "BobUserXYZ is new to SO, he may not know all the social rules of our community, please take that into consideration and try to be welcoming and polite".

I wonder if similar prompts like that on Twitter/et al would improve toxicity. I don't specifically mean a "welcome our new community member" prompt. I'm suggesting UI changes that are designed with the goal of improved community manners which work in the context of Twitter.

StackOverflow being a community of mostly tech professional is far from an analog to Twitter. Surely, the goal of curtailing toxic behavior is much more easily attained in a community where the society have a common goal of solving technical problems.

Once upon a time, I was on a dev team which had to share an RSA 2FA token for accessing a client's VPN. Rather than pass it around to whoever needed it, we just pointed a webcam at it.

That prompts a curious thought: If you dump 1 unit of your toxic blood into the 9 units of blood inside the body of a transfusion recipient, then how toxic does their blood become? 1/10 toxic?

I've also wondered, is it possible for a transfusion recipient to fail a drug screening test because their doner had recently consumed drug prior to their donation.

You just don't understand football, Marge.

Tangential

I've imagined some sort of video watermark that would be dynamically injected into video streams from services like Netflix.

The watermark would ID the account to which the stream was sent. The purpose would be to catch whoever is making the web-rips the make it into the wild.

I don't actually expect anything like this to be practical. It's a lot of technology to develop and support just for the slight chance of catching video pirates. But it's a fun mental exercise.

Questions I ask myself include:

1. What would the watermark look like visually? I image a slightly off-colored pixel appearing at various x,y locations at various time intervals. Sort of like the yellow microdots on laser printers that ID an individual printer.

2. How would the visual data be injected into the existing cached video byte chunks residing on CDN (I'm not sure of the correct technical term for the packets). I suppose the altered packets would have to be created on the fly and sent to the CDN host serving the individual streamer.

My premesis for any time I try to predict Elon Musk's motivations are: 1 his primary goal is to advance humanity, and 2 he is partially a Randian Objectionist.

I also make the presumptuous guess that his actions are often aimed at making money to fund his endeavors to venture into space etc.

He doesn't have the ability to fund his plan using the tax dollars (productive wealth) of a whole county's people, so to fund his goals, he skirts the laws to gain capital via various speculative bets.

I theorize that his absurd behavior is a ruse. He knows what he is doing. He plays the role of idiot rich kid to get people to underestimate him.

Based on these premesis, I theorize that his reason for buying Twitter is to either as a vehicle to fund his humanity aspirations. Whether it's a long term investment, or some cash grab, I don't know. I'm not knowledgeable enough on the financial probabilities of Twitter to make that call.

Working from the assumption that is interest in Twitter is part of his plan to advance humanity, I would say he wants it for it's user population. He wants to stear them from the toxic community which they sometimes are into something more productive. Think of the changes we've seen at stackoverflow in which they have tried to steer communication into a more friendly place for new members. I could imagine changes to the Twitter ui that would encourage users to reflect upon the words they are about to post.

Reminds me of the centrifuges that people would build for Pumpkin Chunkin, a competitive pumpkin throwing contest from Delaware, USA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2GeuWqNXWU

I suspect depression medications may inhibit the effect?

When I was on Wellbutrin, it stopped the mental effect of alcohol. When I imbibed, there was no loss of inhibition normally associated with alcohol use. However, I did still lose physical coordination.

Zoloft did not have the same effect.

The brain is a crazy thing.