HN user

mike_h

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twitter.com 3y ago

Stack Overflow is a cacheless, 9-server on-prem monolith

mike_h
160pts118
www.theverge.com 3y ago

The Speakeasy Economy of WeChat

mike_h
8pts2
www.bloomberg.com 4y ago

Scientists Create ‘Living Machines’ with Algorithms, Frog Cells

mike_h
1pts0
campaignsandelections.com 4y ago

The Urgent Need for Democratic Tech Talent

mike_h
2pts0
www.theguardian.com 5y ago

Exercise instructor appears to unwittingly capture Myanmar coup in dance video

mike_h
2pts0
www.npr.org 5y ago

Why scientists are worried about the coronavirus variant from Brazil

mike_h
47pts19
academictimes.com 5y ago

States with private prisons put more people in prison for longer

mike_h
10pts0
www.rollingstone.com 5y ago

First Rush interview since Neil’s passing

mike_h
4pts1
arstechnica.com 5y ago

Grubhub sets default tip to $0

mike_h
36pts37
www.sciencedirect.com 5y ago

Walking the dog increases the risk of contagion of Covid-19 by 78%

mike_h
2pts2
daringfireball.net 5y ago

Online Privacy Should Be Modeled on Real-World Privacy

mike_h
6pts0
medeng.jpl.nasa.gov 6y ago

Pulse: DIY pendant to warn you when you touch your face

mike_h
7pts0
mobile.nytimes.com 9y ago

Can a Tech Start-Up Successfully Educate Children in the Developing World?

mike_h
1pts0
grouplens.org 10y ago

Investigating the Potential for Miscommunication Using Emoji

mike_h
1pts0
www.csmonitor.com 11y ago

Drone Crashes at White House. Can Secret Service Defeat Quadcopters?

mike_h
2pts0
the12principles.tumblr.com 12y ago

The Illusion of Life: Disney's principles of animation

mike_h
144pts31
m.sfgate.com 12y ago

Pay gaps vary for S.F., N.Y., L.A. tech workers

mike_h
1pts0
www.sfgate.com 14y ago

Mixed-race marrow donors needed (now), really hard to find

mike_h
4pts0
www.randomhacks.net 15y ago

13 Ways of Looking at a Ruby Symbol

mike_h
2pts0
www.informationisbeautiful.net 15y ago

The True Size of Africa (infographic)

mike_h
10pts2
drclydewilson.typepad.com 15y ago

Stanford sports nutritionist: fruit the ideal snack

mike_h
1pts0

I know someone who was in a similar situation at your child’s age, in the Stanford CS program. He was able to pause his studies and secure some kind of agreement he could come back when he felt ready. He worked on his issues for about 15 years, barely making enough to pay rent. But then he went back and finished, subsequently got better jobs, and now he’s retired at age 49.

Just to share that option.

When I was younger I tried the generalist consultant thing. Did a bunch of interesting jobs and patted myself on the back for being able to tackle so many different types of problems, stacks, stages of the business, etc. It actually was really fun.

To my surprise though, as I got more and more general the rates I could demand got lower and lower, even though I had all these successful projects and good references etc. I finally picked up on the fact that the only companies who would consider a generalist either didn’t know what they were doing, or couldn’t afford an expert in the specific skills they needed.

Decided to specialize in something in-demand, and life got a lot easier.

I forgot which numbers I saw, but yeah their overall rate is high. The problem is that so many of the remaining unvaccinated are elderly, so if they start getting sick they’ll get it bad and overload the system.

That’s the question a lot of people seem to have, but think about it: they’ve already bought themselves 2 extra years of vaccine + therapeutics development, and beefing up of medical infrastructure. There’s no way they can do lockdowns forever, and they’re open about that in all the media. But there’s a point in those other trends at which opening up becomes millions of times less dangerous, and we’re just not there yet.

Sounds like they’re only advocating incremental improvements to the current policy?

Compare China death rates over the pandemic to basically anywhere else. If saving 5-10 million lives (estimated based on % of US population lost to Covid) doesn’t count as working, what would?

Sadly that logic doesn’t work here, though it’s tempting. There’s a portion of the population that refused vaccines, due to a combination of factors including misinformation. Omicron going wild would put millions of elderly people into the hospitals, jamming up the healthcare system and leading to millions more excess deaths.

China is on Earth, not in some other solar system. If their excess deaths per capita were a fraction of the numbers in the West, there would be no way to hide it.

I’m in Shanghai too. It’s a city of 25+ million people: there will be some bad stories. But overall it is running remarkably and the vast majority of people aren’t thinking about how oppressed they are by having to eat fish. They’re helping each other and encouraging each other, because they know the cost of not doing this is millions of lives.

Every interaction I’ve had with them over 15 years has been above-and-beyond helpful. It’s been so nice to see the market catch on to them.

I’ve worked primarily with Chinese for years, both inside and outside of China. They consistently poke fun at and speak thoughtfully about the government and policy. It’s possible they just had learned to avoid being baited by westerners looking to confirm a certain narrative.

His alien thought experiment in the “Political Takeaway” section at the bottom is a masterpiece. If you’ve struggled to explain where science lost democracy, this must be as crisp as it’ll ever be described.

The choice isn’t between perfect rationality and hypocrisy, it’s between useful norms and harmful ones. People of every intelligence level defer some decision making to the community and culture, it’s how the species moves forward without having to constantly rethink and re-explain.

Right now it’s likely better to have people wearing masks too often than the other way around.

Anyone know the best legal way in the US to prevent yourself from being kept alive if you end up conscious but completely paralyzed? I know living wills can handle some medical scenarios, but I’m having trouble finding an answer on locked-in syndrome. Wondering if I’d need to form a euthanasia pact with a friend or something.

Duolingo S-1 IPO 5 years ago

Seconding Hello Chinese as a fantastic app. But I just want to share the apparently unusual-around-here experience that Duolingo was one of my best tools for learning and retaining Chinese vocab. I suspect it’s because the whole experience is fine-tuned to be vivid across so many sensory dimensions; when I remember a word I learned in Duolingo I can often also remember the exact place I was standing when I learned it. That does not happen for me with Anki or Hello Chinese. It could depend on brain type or something but I don’t think their success is purely a fraud.