HN user

camelNotation

1,059 karma

I make sense out of complex data sets and people pay me money for it.

Posts0
Comments238
View on HN
No posts found.

What are they supposed to be doing instead of social media? Social media was invented like 10 minutes ago. And they certainly don't need to watch the news on a regular basis.

Play sports, build things, read books, create art (write, draw, paint, design, play music, etc etc), learn new things worth learning, and - God forbid - be BORED sometimes and have to come up with their own adventures and activities.

Parents need to be actively providing children with avenues for their own development and creativity. There are infinite options.

The point still stands that what you are paying for in college is a network and credentials. Harvard offers the best of both, but success is still a thousand inputs and statistical probabilities, no guarantees.

I've worked with several Ivy League grads, including some from Harvard. Some succeed, some still fail miserably. A good education improves your chances of success, but it isn't necessary. So unless you are getting that free tuition or come from a wealthy background, it doesn't make a lot of sense to go through the effort required for a school like that.

I would pay for a personal shopper who is working for me, towards my interests, and not in the interests of any particular store.

We can't trust store employees to give us the best products because not all grocery items are created equal. An apple is not just an apple. There are good apples and bad apples. I don't trust someone whose incentive is to sell all the apples to give me a good apple when they can give me a bad apple that won't otherwise sell.

I also don't like that a store employee only works for one store. I would rather pay a personal shopper to go to grocery store #1 and then grocery store #2 if necessary to get the brands I prefer. Having someone in grocery store #1 tell me "Brand X is out of stock, so we substituted brand Z" is not preferable.

New iPhone SE 6 years ago

Your privacy has much more to do with the apps you use than the phone itself. Apple doesn't collect user data like Google, but the difference between them is 1 company.

If you have an iPhone and you use Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Microsoft Office, Google Photos/Docs, Spotify, the Dominos Pizza app, etc etc there are half a dozen companies holding your private information either way. If you want to go total lockdown, get an iPhone with a VPN and never use any social media or cloud apps, but don't pretend like having an iPhone alone is some huge change to your privacy problems.

New iPhone SE 6 years ago

And I don't think it's true if you want a system that integrates Google Assistant and the G-Cam software. Being privacy-conscious is not universal, it's an individual priority. For you, get an iPhone. My statement was, weighing advantages and disadvantages against one another, the math comes out pretty close.

On a Pixel, I can use Google Assistant like a secretary. It screens the calls, forces the caller to answer questions, then relays the answers to me to see if I want to talk to them. That's pretty damn awesome. But again, it's not everyone's priority.

New iPhone SE 6 years ago

Technically, most Windows desktop hardware is hot garbage. That's what happens when you have a system that can run on pretty much anything. And yet, Windows is the system of choice for large enterprises that have to get work done. Just because a system can run on lots of different systems doesn't make it inferior. If you were to use an equally priced Android device, like the Galaxy S20 Ultra, you would see the same smooth and fast performance you get on an iPhone. And that Galaxy S20 Ultra is still going to fast in 3 or 4 years. I'm running an Android flagship from 2017 and it's as smooth and fast as it was the day I bought it.

New iPhone SE 6 years ago

I feel the same way when someone hands me an iPhone. In 2020, the operating systems are equally capable and refined, it's just a question of what you're used to. If you had a great Android phone for a few months, you'd probably be just as comfortable with it as you are an iPhone.

When someone asks me what phone to buy, my answer is always "what phone do you have now?" because frankly, there is no reason to switch from one to the other. It's just a waste of time and energy to go through that.

If you are guaranteed income, you aren't bound to specific regions or locations. You can move to places with cheaper land and healthcare systems with less overcrowding. You can work less lucrative jobs in those locations and find customers for your work because everyone including the local residents of those rural areas, will have new money to spend. Local regions would see an influx in cash, allowing for small businesses to be reborn in rural areas and spreading the economy out and away from coastal metro areas.

I'm an American who received several months of paid paternity leave when each my children were born (my company is an exception to the rule here in the US). It's not just about the child that is born, it's about your partner as well as your other children. The introduction of a new child is a huge shift for everyone in a family and being there to support your partner during that time makes a huge difference if you spend that time well.

But the biggest benefit of all was in the lives of my older children. When a new baby comes along, their mother is almost entirely occupied caring for the newborn (my wife wanted to exclusively breastfeed our children, so that is a lot of why it played out this way), so having me there to spend time with them each day during those first few months and take them places and reinforce the fact that they are loved just as much as ever was immensely important. I've seen so many older siblings change, develop resentment, begin misbehaving during that transition period. My kids all handled it extremely well and I think I played a role in that.

I sincerely believe every father should have paid time off when a child is born. It's not about one person in the family, it's about how the entire process of bringing a new person into the home affects everyone.

English is for everyone, but as a degree it is really only for those that need concentrated experience with a vast amount of cultural wisdom and experience. I would recommend English to a wealthy student who is destined to oversee some sort of philanthropic, corporate, or political enterprise, but not the working class.

That said, we can all have a richer, more meaningful experience of ourselves and the world by spending time in great stories and myths, so I would still recommend it as an independent study for the average person, just not a degree.

Plus, in nations with high levels of social mobility, studying great works of literature may come in handy when you try to insert yourself into higher levels of society as an adult.

It seems fairly self-explanatory. Sex didn't evolve independently of the rest of humanity and evolution occurs at the level of the organism as well as at the level of the social group (religion, culture, hierarchies, etc). You can't break sex away from the rest of evolution and assume it has no impact on the rest of what and who we are or that what and who we are had no direct impact on the evolution of sex differences. It's not obscure or vague, it's obvious.

Now it may not be USEFUL to make that observation, but it certainly contradicts the manner in which many activist social scientists construe notions of sex and gender with unfalsifiable claims.

What does this mean? The company? The worker? It seems like the company not employing local workers, and the worker not leaving their house, would be worse for community all around.

No, like an actual community. Like people who live near each other and don't necessarily share a corporate brand but take care of each other and share memories and build traditions. People naturally have communities based on place, so getting hired and forced to move for that job disrupts communities. It's better for the everyone's social and psychological well-being to stay put.

You don't, but the smart glass of science fiction probably doesn't have an actual stick of RAM in it either. I think the point was that the ram is still being created as a separate unit and they didn't have to solder it, but did anyway.

It's very difficult (read:impossible) to get evidence for something like this because there is essentially zero detail on these ancient societies. However, it's a theory that is consistent with anthropology, sociology, and evolutionary biology. Could be totally wrong, but probably not.

It is understandable why we are eager to find capacities for language and culture in similar species, but the thing that gives homo sapiens the ability to survive is not just language or art, but our ability to organize large numbers of people under trans-familial identities (i.e. advanced political states and culture-defining religion). If they weren't politically (high level behavior control) and religiously (low level behavior control) organized, they weren't organized well enough survive.

No, Science simply hasn't FOUND the way to talk about it in physical terms which I personally believe in time we will.

Sure, but that's a largely useless belief.

People don't put enough value on the usefulness of a belief. They seem to think it is all about what is true from a data perspective, but truth is only valuable as both thought AND action, with emphasis on action over thought. Example:

- If you think gravity exists but don't behave as if it exists, you're gonna have a bad time because you will probably fall off a cliff, even though you're right about gravity in theory.

- If you don't think that gravity exists, but still behave as if gravity exists, you'll be alright because you won't fall off a cliff, even though you're wrong about gravity in theory.

If dualist thinking helps someone achieve the goals of a psychologist or therapist, then dualist thinking is more valuable than just waiting around for science to fill a gap it may never fill. And just because someone adopts a dualist perspective today doesn't mean they can't reject it tomorrow. There's no rule saying you have to believe the same thing your entire life. So if science comes up with a better explanation, the dualists can adapt then.

The less developed and unsafe the applicant's home country is, the less just the H1B model is. H1B employees are worked like animals under the threat of being sent back or replaced and losing their visa. It's an awful system in general. If we want skilled workers, they should be given a green card and the ability to find work wherever they want and quit whenever they want. Holding their visa over their head via their job is evil.

Sure, but the only way to build resistance to it is to expect more detail in the scan and they can't do that without making the system less convenient for people who grow a beard, wear sunglasses, etc. It can't go pore by pore on the person's face anyway, the infrared scanning process where it projects dots onto the face just isn't that advanced. It might be resistant, but it's hardly a challenge to someone with government levels of resources.

That isn't the failure of warrants, our rights, or any other aspect of the legal process. That's a failure of law enforcement. They can't break encryption, sure, but they also can't read the private thoughts of individuals - yet somehow they've figured out ways to get the information they need most of the time.

A great solution in many of these cases would be to work alongside companies like Apple to implement more products like Face ID. With Face ID, they can take a few pictures of a person, 3D model their face, open the phone. It's an easy thing with the right resources. It's a technological equivalent of interrogation. The same can be done in other contexts, they just need better hackers, better investigators, and more resources on their side.

Agreed. There is no other context where this type of argument works. If I have a right to privacy, that's obviously dangerous because it means I can privately do bad things without easily being seen or caught. That was always the trade off with giving citizens rights and liberty. You can't simply eliminate our rights just because they are a barrier between law enforcement and public welfare. That decision was already made long ago and the choice was to take the risk because the alternative, where those in power can violate the privacy of anyone they choose, turned out to be a pretty terrible thing. Those barriers are a feature, not a bug.