HN user

Step888

29 karma
Posts0
Comments22
View on HN
No posts found.

It's an interesting idea, but it has a few drawbacks.

You can't defend yourself when you're dead. You can't be your own witness. Nor can you face your own accuser. Also, who would you trust to speak that truth for you?

Also, grieving family members are not the most rational people. Doing this could trigger violence in practice.

And obituaries have a legal function. As a modern society, we want to encourage the publication of obituaries as soon as someone passes away. It mitigates the risk of potential fraud.

For example, you could reward high-earning students by giving them a cut of income generated from students who follow.

I know this is not what you're suggesting, but your post just reminded me of something. Many of those schools offer anywhere from $100 to $3,000 referral bonuses to alumni (or influencers) who refer new students to it. This can be a very perverse incentive.

So if you ever speak to an alumnus of a coding bootcamp, make them believe that someone else already referred you to their bootcamp. They're much more likely to tell you the truth about their experience if they know they can't earn a commission from you.

Is there a rational reason to allow credit scores to be factored into hiring decisions...

You'll have to be more specific.

Because I live in a State where credit scores can not be used for hiring decisions unless you plan to give that person signatory powers over your company checkbook/company credit card, or unless that person works for law enforcement, or unless that person will have to deal with lots of cash at any one time, etc.

Actually, can you list some successful conservative cancellings from last decade?

What would be the point? You're just going to move the goalposts again once we do.

In any case, yes, the post you replied to already mentioned one recent example. The Kaepernick kneeling "scandal" happened just 4 years ago. And it's an especially egregious example because President Trump even threatened to use the power of his office and take away NFL's non-profit status if he didn't get Kaepernick fired.

Also, cancelling happens every day in America. Is your son gay? Cancel him. Is one of your classmates gay? Bully him. Is your white daughter dating a black kid? Cancel her. Did a family member stop being a Mormon/Jehovah's witness/Muslim/Scientologist/Baptist/fundamentalist Christian, cancel them. Teaching black history? Cancel the teacher. Cancel the principal. Was your kid killed in Sandy Hook? Shut the f-up, or your life will be cancelled. Did you do your job correctly as a GOP election official and call the race for the Democrats? You better watch your back.

And yes, if your teenager becomes homeless, or ends up killing him/herself. I'd say that's a pretty "successful" cancellation. It's just so common, it has been normalized.

And the abortion clinics, it's not like the threats have stopped these past 10 years. It's just old news. That kind of shunning has never stopped. If it had stopped, we'd have abortion clinics everywhere in America.

And again, we're not saying that cancelling does not happen on the left, but claiming that cancelling is a tool predominantly used by the left is just nonsense. It's not just the left doing it. If you think it is, you've been watching too much Fox News.

In other words, if a set of people don't understand the message, make sure that no one understands the message (not even the people that normally just press the Google Translate button).

Is that what you're saying? Or did I misunderstand you?

There must be reason that this condition has been put into place.

It's because it's a democracy. That's the reason. And the majority of people don't like the idea of potentially being stranded in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. Now, I can appreciate that reason. And I totally understand it myself. And I also understand that drivers can be shit.

But as a former Uber driver myself (not in India, but in California), please try understand it from my perspective as well. Uber doesn't pay for elevation changes. If your car gets damaged on a windy rocky dirt road, or on a road with no lighting whatsoever (Santa Cruz hills, I'm talking to you). Uber won't pay for damages or loss of income. Or if Uber calls you to a neighborhood where drivers get carjacked and pistol-whipped, as a driver, you're the one who has to bear most of those consequences, not Uber (we're not cops, we don't get paid leave, workers comp, or even medical benefits). The same goes if you get called to an area notorious for handing out traffic tickets or parking tickets. Uber pays for none of that, but it will penalize you for refusing the ride (and in San Francisco, it took them almost 10 years from finally blacklisting Market St for pickups, the part that's downtown).

And people can be shit. They'll call you just for getting down a windy dirt road that they don't want to walk down themselves because it's too steep. Or they'll call you just to dump their semi-conscious intoxicated friend into your car. I could tell you a thousand stories.

But my point is, the situation is more nuanced than you think.

He did give us a reason, and I'm sure he's correct to a degree, but as a former Uber driver, I don't want you to completely discount the "fuck you, pay me" attitude of Uber's management either.

For instance, collecting a "$1 safe ride fee" per passenger was a very big fuck you to the drivers. We didn't see a penny of that fee. And it wasn't even counted in the calculation of our commission structure, which they bragged about constantly.

The same goes with many of the other payments it collected from passengers. Eventually, after Uber lost a court case, Uber made every driver sign an agreement that the commission structure had nothing to do with the payments given by passengers.

Uber drivers are meant to be interchangeable cogs. I know this because I used to be an Uber driver myself.

We couldn't set our own rates. We couldn't make our own decisions about the rides we were willing to take. We didn't have our own brand. And there was no way for customers to request us specifically, even if they preferred to be driven by us. This was all by design. Uber drivers are treated as an interchangeable commodity, not as brands.

I couldn't even wait for pings within the warmth of my own home without getting a letter graded report for not having my phone in my cradle. And it's not just the cradle that was a factor. If you drove too "aggressively", or if you drove too fast, their idiotic AI would scold you (and before someone says it, yes, that functionality is turned off now, but know that it was only turned off around the time that Uber was trying to make the argument in court that Uber drivers were not employees. Also note that even thought that particular functionality is turned off, Uber still tries to micromanage drivers in many other ways, even to this day).

This isn't to say that app creators and youtubers don't have their own set of problems with the app store and youtube, they certainly do. But compared to Uber drivers, they still have a thousand times more freedom than Uber drivers.

Tools for Thinking 5 years ago

How much is nulis? I always get nervous when an online service doesn't have an easy to access pricing page.

Tools for Thinking 5 years ago

"Edit: And one pretty annoying thing"

Which one? Zim or Obsidian?

I never used either, so I'm not sure which one you're referring to regarding this "editor width".

Take a look at the other coding bootcamps on that site. They all seem to have very positive reviews.

The problem is that switchup uses the affiliate links of the bootcamps, so it has a financial incentive to sell the bootcamps it features to its viewers. That's how it makes its money.

Now Amazon does the same thing, you'll say. And you'd be right, but with Amazon, it has a reputation to maintain. If Amazon reviews are unreliable, people will stop shopping at Amazon.

With Switchup, it's different. Most people will only buy one coding bootcamp in their lifetime. So withchup doesn't have the same incentive to make its reviews super accurate. It mostly has the incentive to sell as many coding bootcamps as it can.

And let's be honest here, I am no fan of Lambda school and I think it's way too expensive for an online school.

But if the editor cut those 14 words out, it wasn't to make the article more concise, it was to make the audience more outraged and more likely to share that article with others -- thereby increase the number of page views.

Not that I would expect the author to admit that. The author can't speak to the intent of his editor, obviously. And even if he could, I don't think his editor would be too pleased with him if he did that.